Turning Cravings into Customers:
How a Swatch Book Made Borden Synonymous with Grilled Cheese
Turning Cravings into Customers:
How a Swatch Book Made Borden Synonymous with Grilled Cheese
The Situation
Walk the cheese aisle: it’s loud. Claims shout at consumers, broadcasting their products as the boldest, the meltiest, the most “authentic.” Tucked in among all these touts is Elsie the Cow (the Tony the Tiger of the dairy case), a genial, smiling, trustworthy presence identifying the Borden brand, founded in 1861 and the first name in American packaged cheese.
Borden has been in Grandma’s icebox and Mom’s refrigerator for over 160 years, a staple of school lunchboxes, Tuesday-night pans and any homegrown meal crying out for warm, cheesy goodness. But familiarity hadn’t been working for Borden in the 21st century. When algorithms decide what gets seen, even a beloved staple and a friendly cow can be present in the case yet quiet in the culture. Sorry Elsie!
The Challenge
The brand’s challenge wasn’t that people had stopped buying cheese, it was that Borden wasn’t a name on consumer’s lips, in their social feeds or featured in the media – particularly in the high volume category of sliced cheese. That absence of cultural relevance meant one thing: without visibility, even 160 years of trust couldn’t guarantee growth.
The business problem was simple to say and hard to ignore: Borden needed to be top of mind at the moment that drives the most volume for the category, which is sandwich cheese. So, the client brief was very direct: use National Grilled Cheese Day as a step toward their ambition of “owning the sandwich”, but it couldn’t be a one-day stunt or just another forgettable post. We had the day, we had the brand, and we had lots of cheese, but we needed an insight to build on to give people a reason to come back to Borden.
The Research + Insights
We started with eavesdropping… on the internet, of course. We assessed thousands of posts, comments, and videos about grilled cheese. The same friendly arguments kept bubbling up: butter or mayo, American or cheddar, golden-brown or darker toast, diagonal cut or straight down, tomato soup or not, the differences between a melt and a grilled cheese.
But anecdotes only get you so far. So we went out and counted votes. Partnering with YouGov, we surveyed more than 2,000 grilled cheese diehards – people who had made or eaten one in the last month and considered it a go-to comfort food. Here’s what we learned:
- Toast tone: 70% want a golden, buttery crisp; 10% like a darker char; 14% a light toasting.
- Where it happens: 62% say the best grilled cheese is made at home.
- What’s inside: 47% are cheese purists, insisting on bread and cheese only, while the others welcomed added ingredients.
- Pairing: 41% say tomato soup is essential.
- Cheese: Cheddar ranks highest at 46%, but more than 25% mix cheeses.
0%
ARECHEESE PURISTS
(BREAD & CHEESE ONLY)
WHO’S MORE LIKELYTO EMBRACE CHEESE PURIST MENTALITY?
0%
OF MIDWESTERNERS ARE
CHEESE PURISTS
0%
WOMEN0%
MEN0%
OF NORTHEASTERNERS ARE CHEESEPURISTS making them the mostlikely to experiment with extras
0%
of Americans that make grilled cheese sandwiches
STICK WITH 2 SLICESAS THE STANDARD
for grilled cheese
WHO’S MORE LIKELYTO ADD 3+ SLICESOF CHEESE?
MORE THAN
1 IN 5
GRILLED CHEESE MAKERS (22%)
GO BEYOND
WITH 3+ SLICES
WHO’S MORE LIKELYTO ADD 3+ SLICESOF CHEESE?
0%
WOMEN0%
WOMENGrilled Cheese Favorites
0%
Use
AMERICAN
CHEESE
0%
Use
Cheddar
CHEESE
Who’s more likely to spice it up with Habanero Jack & Pepper Jack?
Use
AMERICAN
CHEESE
Use
Cheddar
CHEESE
Who’s more likely to spice it up with Habanero Jack & Pepper Jack?
0%
MEN0%
WOMENThe Strategy
If we wanted Borden to be the name people think of when they say “grilled cheese,” we couldn’t just post a cheesy photo and call it a day. We had to give people something to talk about, something to hold, and a reason to keep talking long after April 12.
Our plan:
- Make it irresistible to join the conversation. Lean into the sensory triggers and hot-button debates people care about – melt, crust, cheese pull – and put them all into one simple, surprisingly provocative question: What makes the perfect grilled cheese?
- Give them a rallying point. Turn our survey findings into a physical object that media, influencers, and fans could touch, share, and argue over. Something that’s unexpected from a cheese brand, but complementary to the debate.
- Turn curiosity into connection. Use the product as the hook for a sweepstakes, collecting first-party data and following up with recipes, tips, and store-locator nudges. Paid, earned, and influencer channels would work together to pull people in and send them straight to the cheese aisle.
The Execution
From April 10 through the end of the month, we took National Grilled Cheese Day from “fun #holiday” to “wait, where do I get that?!” with the first-ever Grilled Cheese Swatch Book.
Built from our survey findings, we picked the top eight Toast Tones, most popular 13 Borden cheeses, and recipes you could almost smell through the card stock as a tool to make picture perfect grilled cheeses your way every time. For the first time, internet debates had a physical form and a reason to say Borden out loud. Then we put it to work:
- Media Outreach: Armed with our data—70% golden crisp, 49% diagonal cut, 41% tomato soup ride-or-die—we gave reporters a fresh, ready-to-bite angle and let them fan the flames of the great grilled cheese debate.
- Influencer Partnerships: Four food creators (Lunchbox Dad, Chef Tyler, Sheila Williams, and Dinner in 321) put their spin on it, calling burnt lovers “monsters”, having their kids point-and-pick their perfect grilled cheese and made recipes by step, obviously putting Borden cheese at the center of content that felt personal and craveable
- Sweepstakes: A year of cheese, a premium panini press, artisanal bread: all could be yours if you signed up! This sweepstakes capitalized on the attention to drive CRM growth.
- Social Content: Swatch Book reveals, influencer recipes, polls designed to start fights (the friendly kind). We kept the feed sizzling all month.
- Website Hub: Every touchpoint – earned, paid, influencer – led to one place: a campaign site with recipes, survey results, the sweepstakes, and a store locator to take the debate straight to the dairy aisle.
The Results
Borden became the “big cheese” in media when it comes to driving awareness and capturing “sandwich” SOV
We leveraged earned and influencer channels to pull people in-store and send them down the cheese aisle looking for Elsie the Cow.
- Comfort food converted to cart: a 9% year-over-year lift in Borden cheese during the campaign period… Talk about makin’ cheddar, literally and figuratively!
- The big cheese of media: 225 earned media placements across national outlets and top 10 DMAs, including USA Today, Yahoo! Life, and 60+ broadcast segments.
Fans weren’t provolone-ly in discussing: 120M+ earned media impressions with 100% positive sentiment, firmly positioning Borden as the brand leading America’s grilled cheese discourse. - It ain’t easy bein’ cheesy: Our limited-edition Grilled Cheese Swatch Book sold out not once, but twice, created a waitlist of over 1,100 fans, and inspired comments like:
- “This looks amazing. I need to try more flavors of their cheeses! I love Borden Cheese!
- “I need that cheese!!”
- "A grilled cheese swatch book?? Where do I get one of those??”
- Influencer content sticky as burnt cheese on a pan: Four creators sparked 95K+ engagements and a 26.1% average engagement rate (13x the industry benchmark).
- Fans had an appetite for more: Sweepstakes entries exceeded industry benchmarks: 19.7K entries (5.6x benchmark) with a 97% conversion rate from landing page to sign-up.
- Havarti-hitting social content: 1.37 million impressions and 364,000+ Reels views, the campaign delivered Borden’s best-performing content ever. The Swatch Book reveal post alone outpaced typical Reels views by 3,000%.
- Pepperjacked-up website traffic: Website traffic jumped 176% YoY, and 35.7% of email clicks led directly to the store locator.
We crashed the party on National Grilled Cheese Day, fed everyone, and sent them home with leftovers. And we’re not done. Plans for 2026 are already cooking with new ideas, new goodies, and an even bigger appetite to keep Borden right where it belongs: at the center of America’s meltiest tradition.
