We recently reported that Saputo brand Treasure Cave has been working with 42 partners to encourage new users to try blue cheese. Hoping to learn more about the initiative, I spoke with Jenny Englert, Marketing Director.
“We really wanted blue cheese to have its time in the sun, its moment to shine,” she began telling me. “We’ve seen other cheese recipes go viral on social media in recent years (ex: the TikTok Feta pasta), and we even had a partner post go viral last year for her Treasure Cave Dirty Martini Dip. This content yielded over 90K shares, 40K saves, 3.5M views, and over 50K engagements across platforms.”
This year, over the course of six months, each of the brand’s 42 food and lifestyle influencers were tasked to create two to three different recipes with blue cheese across various usage occasions. Treasure Cave’s ultimate goal was to create a groundswell of shareable content, showing the diversity of blue cheese and reminding people that it’s not just for hot wings and salads anymore.
“We have influencers making potato casseroles, lobster dishes, biscuits, and even cheesecake with blue cheese. It’s really exciting to see how our product is being used in recipes in such creative and versatile ways,” Jenny added.
She went on to note that the blue cheese category is always evolving. Currently, the brand is dedicated to ensuring consumers know there are a myriad of ways to enjoy blue cheese.
“Working with recipe creators with a social platform and their engaged audiences is an effective strategy for premium and branded content creation and for storytelling directly to the consumer,” Jenny said. “Consumers are actively looking to those influencers they follow for inspiration and trust those influencer recommendations.”
Whether planning a simple, quick meal at home, a lavish holiday buffet, other hosting occasions, or even a big game day, consumers always have an opportunity to serve a delicious recipe and share it with those they love. No matter the occasion, a little blue cheese can add a lot of intrigue to their dishes—something that really stands out and makes them special.
“Who better to challenge you to attempt that dish than an influencer you love and follow? The content creators we work with have such a solid grasp on who their community is and how to effectively communicate with them that we knew it was something we had to tap into as a brand,” Jenny explained. “Direct access to a consumer base that trusts them and engages with them—and the brands that authentically partner with them—continues to prove the ROI potential for influencer marketing as a whole.”
Jenny noted that current usage occasions tie mostly to salads and wing-adjacent uses. Treasure Cave understands that consumers can be hesitant to integrate blue cheese elsewhere due to its powerful flavor, and that’s exactly why the brand is showing its versatility and range of uses, hoping that it might inspire trials of new ways to enjoy the cheese.
This year, Saputo also created Treasure Cave Mild Blue Cheese, as a more approachable take on blue cheese for those who might be “blue curious” but haven’t quite taken the plunge to the funky side.
“With over 120 new recipes coming out of the campaign this year, we are hopeful to inspire more creative and varied uses of blue cheese over time. We encourage consumers to visit our website and explore the recipes tab where they can filter by meal course and season and try any of these recipes. It’s a robust recipe hub and includes our new influencer recipes to-date, with more updates all the time,” Jenny concluded.
As Saputo continues to implement unique brand partnerships, keep clicking back to Deli Market News.