• by Erik Oster , April 15, 2024

Cottage cheese is having a moment.

While audiences may have previously associated the food with 1970s health food culture, or the back of a grandparent’s fridge, its popularity has skyrocketed thanks to viral TikTok videos utilizing the food in novel ways -- from using it as a dip for Doritos, to turning it into a cheesy sauce,  to using it as an ingredient to make ice cream, bread, or fudge.

Dairy brand Daisy has been doing cottage cheese for a long time, but it saw an opportunity to revamp its messaging to reach a new generation. The campaign, entitled “The Daisy Taste,”  is running across national linear TV and on cable, targeting young health-conscious consumers aged 25-45, with a particular emphasis on reaching health-conscious women, young couples with children, and athletic-minded men in their 20s.

“The Daisy Taste” alludes to some of the creativity people are bringing to the dairy product on social channels, while providing a closer look at their curds and whey -- literally.  The ad provides close-ups demonstrating the even texture of the curds in Daisy’s cottage cheese, something the brand — and category – previously avoided in its advertising.

“There was a time whenever you had a cottage cheese ad, you didn't want to be close in on the cottage cheese itself,” since it wasn’t thought to be taste-appealing, Darick Maasen, creative director at Blue Chip Marketing,  Daisy’s agency partner, told Marketing Daily. “But as these trends have put cottage cheese into the purview of younger people, it's no longer seen as [unappealing].  There are enough people doing the heavy lifting to convince people this is delicious. Even the consistency of curds is seen as a delicious thing.”

The decision to “get macro” with shots of Daisy cottage cheese was a driver from the beginning, he explained, with the brand deciding such close-ups would help demonstrate how it’s differentiated from competitors.

“There are cottage cheeses out here I would never want to zoom in on, but Daisy is beautiful close up,” Maasen said. “We talked about how every time we get macro on it, people get to see how [consistent] it is,” he added, “You can't taste the screen, but if you get close up enough, you start to feel it.”

Before its recent resurgence, cottage cheese was largely viewed as a healthy food, but not one that people wanted to eat, with a reputation of being “old people food” and “seen as medicine,” according to Maasen.

While it aims to refresh the brand for a new generation, to illustrate its point audibly, the campaign does lean on an advertising mainstay more common in an earlier era: the jingle, with a refrain of “Only Daisy Cottage Cheese will do.”

“It’s the beauty of the jingle,” Maasen said. “We acknowledge the trend, acknowledge that there are a lot of options –  but when you start eating cottage cheese on a regular basis, only Daisy will do.”