The real challenge wasn’t just about awareness; it was about authenticity. We couldn’t just tell Gen Z that Cheetos were part of UK culture. We had to make it true. We had to embed the brand into their world in a way that felt organic, earned, and impossible to ignore.

Two key insights informed our strategy:

• Gen Z spends 12.4 hours per week on TikTok, more than triple the amount of time they spend on Instagram or Snapchat. In this way, TikTok is truly where everything happens for this generation. It’s where subcultures are born, trends explode overnight, and communities form around the most unexpected things.
• 92% of Gen Z value being “authentic and true to oneself” as important. This passion for authenticity and identity transcends all aspects of their lives, especially in Gen Z’s fashion choices. 

Following a creative sprint we held with TikTok and PepsiCo marketing, we settled on a strategy that was radical in its simplicity: Create an authentic fashion moment that felt real (not manufactured), then let it ripple through TikTok’s interconnected communities.

To break through to Gen Z, we needed to break through on TikTok. And, to break through on TikTok, we needed to make our mark on fashion. Literally.

We decided to lean into “Cheetle.” The deliciously cheesy, bright orange dust that not only gets on your fingers when you eat Cheetos… it also gets on your clothes. 

Our benchmarks were to reach 60% of 18-24 year-olds and shift perceptions around Cheetos and fashion. This would be Cheetos’ first-ever UK campaign and PepsiCo’s largest influencer initiative to date. 

To accomplish this, we went all-in on TikTok. No multi-platform spray and pray. This was about showing up where Gen Z actually lives and speaking their language with content that felt native to the platform.

At the heart of our campaign were Navinder Nangla, the British-Punjabi graffiti artist & designer, and fashion icon Aly Meghani, who boasts 1.3 million TikTok followers. Unlike many creator partnerships, however, the pair didn’t act just as faces for the campaign. Navinder and Aly had already established a creative relationship via their social media presences and, from the start, we worked together to incorporate their “mischievous genius” into the creative DNA of the campaign. 

In a nod to Gen Z’s seamless blend of physical and digital living, we took the online buzz into the real world by tapping into drop-style hype culture.

Navinder announced the limited tee drop on Instagram, then released it via an exclusive pin drop at a corner shop location in Brick Lane… for one hour only.

To amplify the corner shop hype even further, we turned to the people who could genuinely make this moment resonate: 31 fashion-forward Gen Z TikTok creators who were already part of the same cultural ecosystem as Navinder and Aly. 

These creators weren’t picked at random. Each was handpicked, deliberately chosen for their prominence in the fashion scene on TikTok and the genuine connection they had with their audiences. Collectively, they all shared the same authentic passion for fashion, excitement about art and culture, and the kind of creative confidence that thrives on out-of-the-box ideas.

Next, we invited the creators to flex their creative juices with a refreshingly simple brief: Style Navinder’s tee your way, head to a corner shop of your choosing, grab a bag of Cheetos, and— yes—wipe that trademark Cheetle dust on yourself to drive home the message. 

From there, we got out of their way.

This trust proved essential. While the client was understandably nervous about handing over creative control like this, we reassured them that this approach was exactly what would make the campaign work. And it did. 

Rather than forcing these creators into a rigid template, we gave them the freedom to express their individual styles. The result? Over 35 pieces of content that felt genuine, diverse, and true to both the creators as well as Cheeto’s trademark sense of mischief. The comments reflected this too, with audiences celebrating the range of styles on display and the authenticity each creator brought to the table.

Our work helped drive a 50% year-to-date sales uplift for Cheetos, a remarkable start toward that £100M ambition, especially considering we were working with a relatively low marketing budget.

We also achieved:

• 22% ad recall vs. 8% benchmark, which we achieved without using any standard toolkit assets.
• 11.3M reach with 80% landing in the 18-34 demographic. Most campaigns are 18+, multi-platform. We went hyper-targeted to 18-34 on TikTok only and drove incredibly strong reach with the audience that actually matters
• 3.35 second average playtime view, nearly double the snacks average of 1.82 seconds.
• +3.3% uplift in fashion keyword association, indicative of how we literally changed how Gen Z perceives the brand.

Most importantly, the campaign perfectly encapsulates a burgeoning new approach to social media marketing. Not just for Cheetos, but for how any major brand can authentically enter youth culture.

Our strategy was all about creating cultural currency. Making Cheetos something Gen Z wanted to wear, talk about, and be part of. In this way, we made Gen Z not just consumers of Cheetos, but participants in a brand-new Cheetos culture that will continue to grow and evolve with the brand.