Creating buzz and building awareness of new product attributes while gaining a foothold in a crowded category required a big launch.

To accomplish this, we sought a partner that represented our devious-yet-playful philosophy: The film “Despicable Me 2,” which was poised to be 2013’s family summer blockbuster.

It was immediately evident that the Minions — the bright yellow, pint-sized breakout stars of the film — would fit seamlessly within Chester’s world.

The Big Idea: Introduce Mix-Ups as an original story of Chester Cheetah — the catalyst for the creation of this new product as the accidental byproduct of Minion mischief.

• Our animated short has amassed over 9.1million online views, and was featured by Adweek as the third most-watched spot in June 2013.

• Cheetos Mix-Ups sales increased with +38.5% weekly velocities.

• Overall Cheetos core line increased with +7.6% average weekly velocities.

• Participating Cheetos SKUs grew %16.5 vs. 2012.

• Retail placement of 13,744 thematic displays (115% to plan).

• Over 680K consumers entered our One-in-a-Minion sweepstakes (benchmark from previous programs: 450K).

• Chester tripled his Twitter following, and the brand made an estimated 4 million social media impressions