Cheetos understands its audience
What make this campaign cool is the marketing tactics they use to draw attention to their underground following and thus drive traffic to their Web site, where you’ll find a whole nation of Orange Underground followers. Not only are these followers now part of an exclusive group, but they are inspired to a call of action and videotape their RAoCs. So not only do you now create an exclusive following, but now you have a group that interacts with each other to further promote a brand.
And while this did not get such stellar ratings and praise from Advertising Age, I think Cheetos hit the nail right on the head with the audience they are trying to reach. It’s great to see that this company is taking the time to really evaluate their audience and find out what appeals to them. So who cares if Mom doesn’t care for the ad, she’s not the target audience. This reminds me of “old school” Facebook, before all the advertising links and the university’s dean wanted to “Add you as a Friend.” Make things simple and mainstream and you will get many people who might like your product, but make things exclusive and edgy and you will draw a crowd that will be loyal ambassadors of your brand.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I think there is a difference here that needs to be pointed out. The idea of creating “the Orange Underground” (I have seen the commercials and LOVED them) may or may not impact sales. Which i would assume is the end desire of most ad campaigns.
Cheetos is creating an idea of “cool” it is very Fight Club-esque and would, as far as conventional wisdom goes, appeal to their target market (kids). So there are people who do these little mischevious things, (the RAoCs) but does that cause an increase in sales enough to make it worth their while? While integrating multiple points of contact with the same audience (Blogspot, YouTube and the website itself) perhaps this just becomes a venue of entertainment rather than a sales driving tool. And it could theoretically be argued that Cheetos is using its audience to create content which is a good thing, but was the initial investment in the Orange Underground campaign worth having users generate content to users?
I guess what I am saying is that while it is an inventive campaign, utilizing a wide variety of “new media” to reach its target audience. Does it drive sales? does it make an impact on the bottom line? After all isn’t that the idea?