All work

Subway × Cheetos

Certified Hot Mess

A campaign strategy for the Subway × Cheetos collab: three creative territories built on one cultural truth. Gen Z doesn’t dine. It dives in.

Client
Subway, with Cheetos
Year
2025
Scope
Campaign strategy, three creative directions
Strategic territory slide reading “Certified Hot Mess.” on Subway green.

The brief

Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, baked into a Subway sandwich. A collab like that can easily become a menu item with a logo on it. The job was to find the reason it should exist for the people who’d eat it.

The insight

Food culture has shifted from polished to primal. Mukbangs, burger drips, fork-free feasts: messy food has become a badge of authenticity, and online, the more outrageous the bite, the more likely it gets shared.

Gen Z already owns its chaos. “Hot mess” went from insult to identity. And Subway has always been custom chaos: no two sandwiches alike, no “right” way to build one. The collab didn’t need to invent permission to get messy. It just had to own it.

“Together, it’s not a sandwich, it’s a flavour free-for-all.”From the strategy
  1. Strategic territory slide reading “Certified Hot Mess.” on Subway green.
    001

    Certified Hot Mess.

    Flips a cultural phrase into a food-level flex, owning the chaos proudly. In tune with Gen Z’s ironic, self-aware humour, and it opens the door to creative mess: orange smudges on shirts, sauce moustaches, loud flavour reactions.

  2. Strategic territory slide reading “Guess What’s Dusting Your Fingers Now”.
    002

    Guess what’s dusting your fingers now.

    Orange fingers used to say “I was snacking.” This flips the snack-stained hand into proof of a meal so good it brands you. The finger-stain is no longer a side effect. It’s the main course.

  3. Strategic territory slide reading “All Five Senses. All Fired Up.”
    003

    All five senses. All fired up.

    Gen Z are experience eaters: they film, crunch, pull and savour. A sensory rally cry that turns up every part of eating, so the new menu reads as something you feel, not just something you eat.

Culture slide: “Today’s foodies aren’t dining, they’re diving in,” with social posts of messy food.
Culture first: the shift from dining to diving in.
Slide: “Plot twist: it’s not the Cheeto. It’s the sandwich,” with an orange-dusted hand.
The plot twist that set up territory 002.
Five hand-drawn sense cards describing how the sandwich looks, sounds, tastes, feels and smells.
The sensory platform: one card per sense, written to be felt.