It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Cheesy

As I was bringing the second slice of pizza to my mouth on Super Bowl Sunday night, my eyes were suddenly glued to the screen. The Shaggy song, “It Wasn’t Me” was blasting through the speakers of my boyfriend’s TV and I couldn’t have been happier to hear this hit from 2000. All the sudden, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis also took the screen for — a Cheetos commercial?

Brand Awareness & Reminiscing
Everyone knows the brand Cheetos, so this commercial simply brought back and refreshed the brand in consumers’ minds. For me, it brought back memories from childhood, even when I was having a snack bag for snack at school and licking my fingers to get the “Cheetos Dust” or Cheetle off of them. The whole commercial is comical and grabbed my attention, but was also reminiscent. The hit song that was remixed in it, “It Wasn’t Me” is a number 1 hit from 2000. For me, the song brings back childhood memories because I remember my mom didn’t like when I listened to it because she thought it was inappropriate. However, it is really catchy and is the kind of song that gets stuck in your head- and now I associate it with Cheetos. In addition, everyone can relate to sneakily taking a loved one’s snacks- you just can’t resist!

Overall Message & Outreach
Although this commercial doesn’t touch on the current state of the world today, I do think it sticks true to the brand’s story. This commercial shows what an easy, fun snack Cheetos can be and how it can be enjoyed with loved ones. The commercial shows that the snack is irresistible and it pulls you in, between the music and comic celebrities featured, more than just pushing the product at you. And the short clip ultimately creates a catchy piece of sharable media. This commercial was shared by Chester Cheetah, Cheeto’s mascot on his Twitter account. The tweet was retweeted nearly 4k times and received 15.5k likes. Even Bomani Jones, an influential host, journalist, and executive producer, tweeted “who at cheetos was like ‘i think we can get shaggy’?”, which got 3.9k shares and was liked by 33.1k people because it is an unlikely pairing, but worked in this ad.

The content is very shareable, and is comical, which is why it has caused such a hype. The video has gotten nearly 900,000k views on YouTube since it was posted, furthering the buzz. Maybe this will be Shaggy’s big comeback…