In 2025, grocery price hikes were decimating the frozen pizza aisle and Totino’s was losing market share to competitors. Grocery shoppers were choosing private label, or worse yet, abandoning the frozen aisle entirely. It was time for Totino’s to flip the script and supercharge our efforts to win the wallets of our core audience, Gen Z. It all started with unhinged, wacky content and convos on social. Our strategy of bringing “rule-bending entertainment and snackified humor to Gen Z” proved successful over the last couple of years, but as a tidal wave of brands joined the “unhinged” corners of the Internet (think: Duolingo, Sour Patch Kids, and Ryanair) we were battling brutally crowded feeds. To stand out, we needed to go nuclear on the Totino’s “unhinged” strategy to stop the scroll while also finding new, less crowded spaces and platforms.
This led to three game-changing Internet wins for Totino’s. First, we unleashed unhinged energy at the Super Bowl via the brand’s beloved alien character, Chazmo. Second, we cranked up the entertainment ante on Snapchat (one of Gen Z’s top platforms) by launching a Totino’s page, featuring products in mind-bendingly absurd ways. Third, we hijacked kitchens with a diabolically delicious, engagement bait, pizza roll recipe that even Mario Lopez had to try.
1. Bringing Unhinged Entertainment To The Super Bowl:
So, what does an “unhinged” approach to advertising’s biggest holiday look like? For Totino’s, it meant making Gen Z-ers fall madly in love with our alien mascot, Chazmo, on social media ahead of the big game… only to mercilessly axe him on that Sunday. After Chazmo's tragic and untimely demise in the Super Bowl TV spot, we stoked the flames with comments across the Internet to fuel conversation. Post-Super Bowl, used our audience comments to respond with completely bonkers content to memorialize Chazmo and milk the mayhem. This approach led to over 27 million total impressions—and over 260,000 shares across social.
2. Adding Absurdity On Snapchat
While the Super Bowl offered a seismic cultural moment to own “unhinged” storytelling at scale, we spotted a parallel opportunity in spaces where competitors hadn’t even touched, Snapchat. Snap emerged as a glaringly underutilized opportunity; a platform where Gen Z was constantly glued, but where unhinged brand content was virtually nonexistent..
So we launched the brand on Snapchat to connect with Gen Z on one of their most active social platforms (half of Gen Z teens use Snapchat daily, and 57% of the platform’s active users are age 13-24). Throughout 2025, we unleashed our greatest hits on Snapchat, obsessing over surprising audiences with Totino’s products in hilariously absurd, completely random locations. In just six months, these efforts earned over 3 million views and over 68,000 engagements, further solidifying the dominance of Totino’s rule-bending approach.
3. Creating A Diabolically Delicious Recipe
Beyond platform-specific plays, we stumbled upon another gaping white space opportunity staring us straight in the face. Recipes. No one was making these batsh*t crazy. So, we took it upon ourselves to concoct a deceptively innocent pizza roll recipe to inject absurdity (and a little delicious chaos) into a space so bizarrely unexpected that our audience couldn’t resist taking the bait.
We called it “Florida Chili.” It was insane enough to freeze users mid-scroll, but plausible enough to make our audience think, “Would that actually be good?” The brilliance was in the premise: By pretending the recipe originated in Florida, we ignited fierce conversation and participation, with Floridians flooding the comments to passionately defend their state. The Totino’s Florida Chili recipe gained 11 million views on TikTok and 4.7 million views on Instagram. Beyond social, it was featured in AllRecipes and Men’s Journal, and even Mario Lopez taste-tested it live on Access Hollywood.
Overall, Totino’s racked up almost 60,000 new followers across TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, along with a staggering 47 million organic views between January and October 2025. And, the Chazmo Super Bowl play delivered the strongest sales quarter in the last 2 years.
All of which proved that there’s literally no ceiling to “unhinged, rule-bending” entertainment. Buckle up. We’re not done yet. The internet has infinite corners yet to be explored, and the chaos is just heating up.