Campaign Trail is our analysis of some of the best new creative efforts from the marketing world. View past columns in the archives here.

PepsiCo scored big last February when it mashed up the dill pickle trend with its Flamin’ Hot portfolio to unleash Cheetos Crunchy Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle. The salty-spicy snack quickly became the fastest-selling limited-edition flavor in Cheetos’ brand history before becoming a permanent item. But the return of Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle needed a launch campaign befitting its outsized fandom.

“It was a question of how are we going to do this justice,” said Chris Bellinger, chief creative officer at PepsiCo Foods U.S. “If we're going to do this and bring it back in a really big way, what could we do with this?”

Eventually, PepsiCo and agency partner Gut Miami landed on “Pickle’s Back,” a song that remixes Nickelback’s 2001 hit “How You Remind Me” with a verse by rapper Megan Thee Stallion and is accompanied by a music video on the brand’s YouTube channel that turns the flavor’s comeback into a mini heist movie. To support the launch, Cheetos dropped behind-the-scenes stills and footage across talent and owned social platforms, while also boosting the video on digital platforms.

“Being Chester Cheetah and Cheetos, we gotta be mischievous in it. We gotta have some fun with it. But you also want to be on the top of culture and also creating culture,” Bellinger said.

Push it to the limit

Gut Miami first made the pickle-back, Nickelback connection, suggesting that PepsiCo tap its long-standing relationship with Megan Thee Stallion for a collaboration. The fact that the rapper had been seen on TikTok jamming to the post-grunge band added fuel to the fire for an unlikely partnership that eventually came together. 

The agency brought new lyrics to Nickelback, who decided to rewrite the song themselves with the product in mind; lyrics like “Are we having fun yet?” turned into “Are your fingers red yet?” The band then collaborated with Megan Thee Stallion, and the result surprised the team with how good the Cheetos-themed rap-rock remix actually sounded.

“There were some surreal moments during that whole time where [Nickelback frontman] Chad [Kroeger] whipped out his guitar and started playing and riffing on some songs on the Zoom call,  like, ‘What am I doing? Where are we?’,” Bellinger recalls.

PepsiCo then enlisted director Dave Meyers, a music video legend who has helmed clips for the biggest names in pop music and has worked with the company before. The “Pickle’s Back” video is an extreme adventure. After a miscommunication on a music video set, Megan connects with Nickelback, donning Chester Cheetah masks and executing a heist on a Cheetos vault. A truck chase ensues, Megan surfs a wave of red Cheetos dust and chaos erupts in the streets.

“He's always one of my go-tos when [we can] be weird,” Bellinger said of Meyers. “He can either push stuff really, really extreme and I can pull it back, or vice versa, being like, ‘This isn't far enough,’ and he gets really excited.”

Nostalgia and the attention economy

In the same way that the Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle snacks are on-trend with regards to flavor, the “Pickle’s Back” effort hews close to a marketing trend around young consumers engaging with culture from before they were born, which has been called “newstalgia” or “borrowed nostalgia.” For Cheetos, an iconic brand with a large audience, it is difficult to target one cohort and not bridge generations.

“We have to continually evolve our brands to make sure that we're staying … at that tip of the spear,” Bellinger explained. “It's using things that are instantly recognizable that bring you in, but still have such a fresh take to it that it doesn't feel like you're just borrowing for nostalgia’s sake, because the last thing we want to do is feel like we're old.”

The four-minute music video is also in line with a returning trend around longer-form content; both KFC and Hollister recently released campaigns in the form of music videos. Such content is more in line with what is favored by evolving social media algorithms that are putting a premium on sticky content with higher completion rates.

“We're in an attention economy, so if I can make you stay around for more than five seconds, we've got something good. If I can make you stick around for three minutes, I've got something epic,” Bellinger said. “We always joke, I can buy a like and I can buy a view, but I can't buy a comment or a share.”

In that way, “Pickle’s Back” is a success: PepsiCo saw about 150,000 shares of the video. Comments from consumers shared the sentiment that they were shocked that they watched a four-minute commercial and were ready to watch it again, or a desire to buy the product just to see what other commercials could come next — the type of attitude that lends itself to organic virality and real engagement. And after the success of Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle, could the brand release the Cheetos Anchovies and Mayo flavor that an executive shills in the music video?

“We might have to do an LTO, right? Like, hold on, that might actually be good,” Bellinger joked. “Even the R&D team was like, ‘You guys have lost your minds.’”