It’s impossible to enjoy Cheetos without getting a little, or a lot, of Cheetle on your fingers—you know, that signature orange dust. A Cheetle-covered hand can get messy, and that’s the premise behind Cheetos’ “Other Hand” campaign, which launched in the spring and highlights the challenge of keeping one hand free while eating the cheesy snack with the other. The brand found that 99 percent of people eat Cheetos with their dominant hand and put that stat to the test at The Other Hand Escape Room, in partnership with Thrillist.
The IRL embodiment of the campaign opened at The Escape Game in Brooklyn, NY, for a weekend, Oct. 25-27, inviting Cheetos fans to step into Chester Cheetah’s Crunchy Cabin deep in the woods of Cheddar Canyon. Unfortunately, Chester forgot to leave a key, so participants had to find their own way inside, searching for clues, finding hidden locks and completing tasks. Adding to the challenge, they couldn’t use their dominant hand because it was in a Chester Cheetah paw glove (to simulate the Cheetle effect); they had to rely on their “other hand” to move through the 30-minute experience.
In groups of six to eight, attendees started the experience “locked out” from the cabin in a woodsy setting, surrounded by plants, trees, mulch and rock formations. After working through a couple of challenges, they got inside, where they were met with activities rooted in “Gen Z scaries,” such as calling a service provider to fix broken Wi-Fi and reading through a long terms and conditions agreement.
A slide through a passage in the fireplace led down to the final room, where they discovered a “Dangerously Cheesy” neon sign, a giant bean bag chair and posters of Chester Cheetah engaging in outdoorsy activities. Once attendees solved the final problem, Chester himself emerged from a secret door and greeted the group to celebrate their victory—a standout experience for the participants. Of course, Cheetos samples fueled participants throughout, with the chance to enjoy the snack before the experience and afterward as a celebratory treat. More than 1,000 bags of Cheetos were distributed.
“Our brand is all about playful mischief, so we thought this partnership and putting consumers in this escape room would be an amazing way to let them live and breathe our new campaign beyond just snacking,” says Flavia Simoes, senior director-marketing at Cheetos. “For us, it’s important that we are always integrated in culture, in moments in which consumers are having fun.”
A Cheetos-fied, unapologetically playful orange explosion is how Simoes describes the intentionally designed, immersive environment that took four months of planning: “Everywhere you would see some sort of Cheetos element, either referencing the brand itself or Chester as the mascot.”
The escape room was only open to preregistered attendees, and all reservation spots were claimed in just 39 minutes, with 3,000 people on the wait list. Cheetos, Thrillist, The Escape Game and influencers shared content on their social media channels to promote the experience and drum up excitement for not only the Brooklyn event, but also a complementary digital escape room. For those who were on the wait list or couldn’t make it to the city, Cheetos offered a branded digital extension of the in-person experience. By mid-November, 1,500 people had participated in the digital The Other Hand Escape Room, which was open through the end of the month.
“In the world that we live in today, we need to be mindful about strategizing in the digital world and understanding how fans consume and interact with media to engage them and make sure that all who want to participate with us have that experience in some sort of way,” Simoes says. “It’s super critical to continue to find a way to help create this emotional, awesome connection between brand and fans, build real-life experiences and find that intersection that creates organic fun.” Agency: Vox Media.
Photo credit: Dorothy Hong
