Like many other brands, Cheetos wanted to associate itself with up-and-coming stars. The goal was to create a campaign that appealed to younger audiences.

But in a world where brands spend $2.5 billion every year making celebrities the faces of their products, we needed to do something different to stand out in a sea of celebrity faces. Especially since our most notorious brand asset has nothing to do with your face. It’s the orange dust (a.k.a. Cheetle) that gets on our customers’ fingertips.

So we decided to flip the world of celebrity sponsorships on its head (or, rather, on its “hands”).

Celebrities are usually the faces of brands. Well, unless that brand is Cheetos.

Cheetos snacks are famous for leaving orange dust on your fingers. And Cheetos has created countless campaigns owning this distinctive asset. But in 2023, we did something no other brand could do. We introduced “Sponsortips,” the world’s first fingertip sponsorship deal.

We launched the campaign by hiring superstar Becky G and Hollywood actor Simu Liu and showcasing their Cheetle-covered fingertips in TV, print and OOH. But we also wanted to take “Sponsortips” into the real world.

Celebrity sponsorship contracts often require celebrities to wear products like sneakers or clothes out in public. So our contract required them to “wear” Cheetos dust on their fingertips in paparazzi photos and even sitting courtside at an NBA basketball game.

Millennials and Gen Z are driving snacking growth at unprecedented levels—half of US consumers have three or more snacks daily, up by 8% in the last two years (according to Circana).

Cheetos targets these groups by focusing on a more holistic mindset. Despite their age, our audience defies norms of adulthood, including eating snacks as meals. More important, they prefer not to take life, or advertising, too seriously.

So we made a fully integrated campaign that did exactly that—making fun of celebrity sponsorships in a way that only Cheetos can. We had our celebrities to show up on social (and in the real world) with their fingertips covered in orange Cheetos dust.

We wanted to put their fingers everywhere you’d expect a sponsorship to appear: film, OOH, magazines, even real-world appearances, from paparazzi pics to live events (that would be amplified in social media). All with their orange fingertips.

In July 2023, we launched in the US market, sponsoring the fingertips of Latin pop star Becky G. In September, we sponsored the fingertips of Hollywood star Simu Liu in the Canadian market.

Each celebrity launched the sponsorship on their social feeds, announcing it to their millions of fans. Their fingertips started showing up everywhere their faces would usually go: billboards, social platforms, “leaked” paparazzi photos. All supported by a series of online social videos.

We worked directly with HELLO! Canada to create an alternative cover for their November 11 issue, featuring Simu Liu and his orange fingertips.

On February 14, 2024, we hijacked the spot where all celebrities go to be seen. Simu showed up courtside at an NBA basketball game waving his orange fingertips. To make sure this moment went viral, we sat influencers throughout the arena and Simu himself posted the video to all his fans.

The world’s most unique sponsorship got attention from both the media and our fans, with over 2 billion earned-media impressions. It also received 99% neutral and positive sentiment online.

In Canada, Cheetos Crunchy, our core product, achieved 24% sales growth year over year.

And by focusing on our iconic orange dust, we were able to stand out from the competition, with brand recall a whopping 34% higher than our CPG competitors.

The campaign also made a splash in pop culture and was covered by major media outlets like Forbes, People magazine, E!, Billboard magazine, Access Hollywood and many others.

And after our campaign launch, Kim Kardashian appeared on the cover of GQ magazine licking her own Cheetle-covered fingertips, which we didn’t even have to pay for.

“Sponsortips” was such a success, it has now become a global platform for the brand, with more famous fingertips to come in 2024.