A Lesson In Marketing Strategy From the Cheetos Shape Hunt

Searching for Cheetos that are shaped like anything is a fairly idiotic way to spend your time. It’s also surprisingly popular despite its idiocy. The thing about Cheetos is that people love to see things that aren’t really there in the shape of their Cheetos. At one point, the brand famously created an entire museum to house the most unique discovered Cheetos shapes.

Now in a newly launched campaign there’s a cash prize attached for someone who gets picked because their Cheetos discovery best matches a weekly theme. This is a fun way to win some money, but the brand marketing lesson here isn’t really about this momentary engagement. What stands out to me is the consistency of this and past campaigns going back nearly a decade and how they celebrate a random quirky fact about Cheetos. Lots of food products look like other things. Most don’t choose to make that a defining trait for a marketing campaign.

The fact that Cheetos keeps returning to this quirk illustrates one of the least followed principles of great marketing strategy. Instead of reinventing the message with every campaign, find a positioning for your product that sticks and then keep leaning into that from one creative way to the next.