"After spending some time with Cheetos' new Orange Underground,
a full blown movement "committed to transforming sterile order into
messy mayhem," its primary purpose of urging people to do wacky Random
Acts of Cheetos that don't involve eating makes perfect sense. After
all, Cheetos aren't even food. They're just a bunch of man-made
chemicals mixed together and placed in a bag. This campaign is much
like the Mentos/Diet Coke thing whereby people were urged to perform
all manner of chemical wizardry as opposed to actually consuming the
products, both questionable, at best, as to whether or not they, too,
are actual foods.
These kinds of strategies serve everyone's needs. The marketer makes
money because people buy their product. The consumer has more fun and
stays healthier by engaging in these games and contests than if they
actually consumed the stuff. And, the marketers come out looking like
heroes in front of junk food cause groups because they can respond to
concerns, saying, "Hey we just want people to buy our products. We
don't actually want them to consume the crap."
There's a few components to The Orange Underground campaign. First, there's a "commercial"
that is one of the weirdest things we've ever seen. There's a
laundromat, two women, one old dude and a Patrick Stewart-voiced,
mischievous Chester Charlie who's there but not really. Weird.
Then there's the Orange Underground website
which delivers its primary content in the form of a "we've hijacked the
airways" style video (which changes a bit each time you view it) that
explains the group's movement and leads to other items such as a poster
which can be downloaded to spread the group's gospel. There's a fake
news report covering the groups' Random Acts of Cheetos. There's a blog
and a mysterious event that will occur on April Fool's Day. It all
makes for an engaging experience. Even if we'd never actually eat the
stuff."
via Adrants
