Case study
Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese reaches millennial audiences with the help of Amazon Ads
When PepsiCo combined two of the cheesiest, most delicious foods – Cheetos and macaroni and cheese – into one snack, they knew how important it would be to tell their brand story for their new product launch: Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese. Specifically, Cheetos wanted to expand their audience of loyal Cheetos-loving customers to reach snack-loving, new-to-brand millennials. To assist in that endeavour, Amazon Ads helped not only with campaign execution but also with shaping the creative strategy.
Identifying key insights
The Amazon Ads creative strategy service offers an insights-driven, creative-first approach to ad campaigns, helping advertisers try to identify and address brand opportunities through new brand strategies and campaign ideas. In this case, Amazon Ads worked with PepsiCo’s media agency to help develop a creative strategy for the promotion of Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese, a macaroni dish in Cheetos flavours such as Bold & Cheesy, Flamin’ Hot and Cheesy Jalapeño.
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To inform the creative strategy, Amazon Ads reviewed a variety of first-party shopping signals and third-party insights to help Cheetos better understand their millennial audience’s purchasing interests and preferences. In recent years, the popularity of convenient single-serve meals has increased, with 70% of millennials preferring snacking to meals, according to a report by Mondelēz.1 With a focus on millennial snack consumption, Amazon Ads found that Cheetos shoppers visiting the Amazon store are more likely to be younger adults and unmarried, in comparison to shoppers of similar brands.2 Based on these insights, Amazon Ads recommended that Cheetos communicate the versatility of the new product as a meal that Cheetos customers could snack on.
Campaign creative featuring Chester and Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese Cheesy Jalapeño flavour
Campaign creative for Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese with Bold & Cheesy flavour
Campaign creative featuring Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese as a snack with Flamin’ Hot flavour
Building a creative strategy to help reach millennials
Given the insights from Amazon Ads, Cheetos focused their creative strategy on promoting Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese as a snack. They tailored the messaging of the ads to the younger adult audience and their preferences, highlighting that Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese is “a fun, quick and convenient addition to pantries that consumers will love,” and that it can go “from crunchy snack to cheesy mac.” The campaign landing page on the Cheetos Store on Amazon featured “Cheetos Mac Hacks”, encouraging consumers to create their own Cheetos-inspired recipes to help connect the familiarity of Cheetos with the new offering. A beloved snack often featured in recipes, including viral social media videos and photos, the brand wanted to raise awareness with that loyal audience too.
Cheetos Store on Amazon featuring Mac'n Cheese
“Cheetos Mac Hacks” promotion encouraging consumers to create their own Cheetos-inspired recipes
The campaign was set to run across Amazon DSP static and video placements and lead customers to the Cheetos Store on Amazon, but Cheetos did not have lifestyle imagery to support the creative idea. Cheetos also wanted to amplify the campaign idea across their social channels. To solve for the lack of visual assets, Amazon Ads developed ready-to-use creative assets for various Amazon DSP placements, as well as templates that Cheetos would be able to use for a consistent look and feel across the campaign’s other channels.
Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese video campaign creative
Successful results from the campaign
The results from the Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese campaign showed uplift across the funnel for their key performance indicators, particularly for ad awareness, with an 8.7% increase according to a Kantar Brand Lift Insights Report.3 This suggests that the Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese branding resonated well with the Cheetos millennial audience that Amazon Ads sought to help Cheetos reach.
Also, due to the display media used in their campaign, Cheetos saw a significant lift in purchase intent (5.3%) and brand favourability (6.3%), along with ad awareness.4 When it comes to creatives, it’s important to make sure branding is upfront and has a clear role in the ad, and that’s exactly what Cheetos did.
Even more from Cheetos
This campaign is just one example of the growing collaboration between Amazon Ads and PepsiCo. In 2022, Amazon Ads built an immersive ad experience with Cheetos at South by Southwest, and Cheetos worked with Amazon Ads and Prime Video for a full-funnel campaign inspired by the Amazon Original series I Know What You Did Last Summer.
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1 Mondelez, State of Snacking, 2021
2 Amazon internal data, US, 2022
3 - 4 Kantar Brand Lift Insights Report with Amazon Ads for Cheetos Mac ’n Cheese, May 2022