gordonzola

Usually I just use this space to mock bad cheese industry advertisements. But I actually kind of like this one.

Sure the ye olde ship may be a little misleading. But few people find containerization as aesthetic as I do. And the Keane eyes on the cow are, like Allison on the most recent ANTM, a little disconcerting. Plus she’s waving at the cheese as if they are her babies, emigrating to a better life. In the cheese business no one likes to talk about the real cow babies, especially the males.

And what’s with the one wheel in the water? Is it trying to escape? A non-believer in the American dream trying to escape back to its homeland and community? Or a non-selected Graskaas, maybe even a Vlaskaas that painted itself blue and tried to stowaway and got thrown overboard. Perhaps it’s a Graskaas that overslept and literally missed the boat? No matter what, it doesn’t see to be headed towards a pleasant fate.

Still, it’s miles away from most inter-industry cheese advertising that tends to be ugly, crass, and less subtle about discussing units and profit. The cut and paste is pretty cute and it actually serves a purpose since this is a really a note reminding me that our pre-orders for the first Dutch cheese of the year made from grazed (Spring) milk are on their way.

I can’t shake the feeling however, that our Graskaas might get stolen by pirates.

( There's a bigger version here behind the cut )

Current Music: Wat Tyler -- “Coming Home”

I get a fair amount of cheese advertising sent my way. I can't complain and I don't usually mock. But sometimes mocking is just what is deserved.

This ad (I cut off the contact info) came to my attention. "Jarlsberg Goes Green"? What could this mean? No more potassium sorbate in the rind?* A committment to buying milk from small farms? Instituting herd limits and requiring grazing? Insisting on wind power and methane digesters on the farms they buy from?** No, I thought, probably some pseudo-green thing like buying carbon offsets to mitigate shipping cheese all over the world.

In fact, it's not even that. No, Jarlsberg is offering consumers an 80% post-consumer waste bag with proof of purchase.

Wow. How can the other corporations let them get away with this? Truly every day is earth day when you eat Jarlsberg cheese. Earth-rapers fear the wrath of the mighty, mighty cheese company giving out mostly-recycled shopping bags with cute pictures of cows!

* Ha. while looking into this ad I found that they finally did do this in June. Now, that would have been a useful, reality-based trade advertisement.
**I have no reason to believe that Jarlsberg is any worse than other large dairy cooperatives. Being in Norway, whaling issues aside, they probably have tougher environmental laws than in the U.S. But c'mon. Plus their website is written in corporate-speak indecipherable to anyone looking for real information. ETA: much Jarlsberg is now made in the USA so this footnote is now less meaningful. Thanks Steve!

Current Music: Grotus - "Edward Abbey"

Perhaps the real sign of cheese being trendy is seeing actual ads for cheese brands not in the trade publications. Except for Kraft and a few Tillamook billboards, there is not much in the way of direct advertising to the public with cheese companies.(There are the Milk Marketing Board ads: "Real California Cheese", "Behold the Power of Cheese" etc. which are funded by an involuntary tax on farmers from every gallon of milk their mammals produce, but that's not what I'm talking about.) Instead they focus on me, the retailer. They may give ad money for in store sale ads and the like but those usually just contain the company logo and honestly, are more of a bribe then anything else. The point is to get the retailer to bring in the product, counting on the buyer to get the word out.

So it was with much amusement that I saw this in the recent New Yorker Food Issue (which I found totally below par, but that's another story).

You wouldn't want to disappoint Susan would you? Really, since Emmi pretty much owns the US Swiss import market, it's encouraging you to spend more not buying the domestic, French, Dutch or Norweigen Swiss-style cheeses. Interestingly, to me at least, is that they ignore the one actual difference: the real Swiss is the only one made with raw milk.