Cheez-It to Smart Car: We're Better Together

Cheez-It’s social media agency covered a smart car in crackers and then tweeted a picture of it to @SmartCarUSA. Razorfish, one of Kellogg’s digital agencies, activated the snack’s Twitter account in September, and upped the ante with the campaign that includes a promoted tweet and a making-of Vine.

The team drove the encrusted smart car around the campus of Northwestern University on ESPN’s College Gameday.

As Cheez-It has found on Facebook, its fans love to play with the cracker’s “iconic food form,” says Thomas Quish, creative director for Razorfish, which handles social strategy and social content creation for the brand. “People do all sorts of fun stuff with it.”

With more than 4 million Facebook followers, Razorfish decided it was time to expand Cheez-It’s social media presence with Twitter, using a strategy the team calls “let Jack out to play.” The target for the brand’s social communications is loosely males, approximately 18 to 34 and those with fast enough metabolisms to consume the most of the hearty snack.

Razorfish wanted to include some brand-to-brand social conversation. “Smart car has a personality in line with our brand personality and also it was the smallest car, so that made for the most efficient use of Cheez-Its,” Quish says.

Razorfish social media strategist Jeff Beck adds, “It took us long enough to cover a smart car; think about how long it would take to cover a minivan.” The Razorfish team would not disclose how it got the Cheez-Its to stick to the car; Beck would say only that it was “a proprietary adcheesive.”

The brand has received plenty of unearned media recently, thanks to Top Chef Season 4 winner Stephanie Izard. For her recent wedding, the pastry chef of her Girl & The Goat restaurant created a Cheez-It-flavored cake whose filling included chocolate-covered Cheez-Its, along with chocolate ganache, peanut butter. Izard told People magazine that Cheez-Its are her favorite snack.

While Razorfish had nothing to do with the wedding cake, the smart car stunt gained more than 500 new Twitter followers for @TheRealCheezIt and plenty of attention on the Northwestern campus.

Quish says, “Any brand can wrap a car in a branded wrap, but to be able to cover a car in your product, instantly breaks through the pedestrian mindset. And you can smell the Cheez-Its from five blocks away.”