By Heather Taylor, Editor-in-Chief, PopIcon
If you peel back enough layers, you’ll discover there’s more humanity in string cheese than you’d think.
One of the most obvious examples is found in the way we eat string cheese. The internet has largely decided there is a right and wrong way to do it. “Barbarians” are those that chomp or bite into a cheese stick. Those that take the time to peel it for its strings get the “normal human” designation, although neither approach is inherently right or wrong. The idea that all approaches to string cheese consumption are right was the inspiration behind Frigo Cheese Heads launching a 2022 campaign called “We Are All Cheese Heads.” Not only does this campaign celebrate being who you are and snacking however you want, but it also put a name and personality into its primary brand mascot — Clark Cheese Head — and gave him an entire cast of friends in the Cheese Head crew.
“We Are All Cheese Heads” is still active so PopIcon decided to check in and see where the Cheese Heads are at in 2024. We’re joined by Jason Bottenus, Executive Creative Director at Carmichael Lynch and Jenny Englert, Director of Marketing at Saputo, to learn more about the new characters, the evolving personality of Clark Cheese Head, and why string cheese is deserving of its own brand mascot and roster of characters.
PopIcon: How long has Frigo had these characters as their mascots?
Jason Bottenus: The brand has always had a Cheese Head character as part of its name and logo. The Cheese Head has had a few evolutions over time, with the most recent version being around for only a few years.
When Carmichael Lynch began working with Saputo/Frigo Cheese Heads, our task was to increase brand awareness and differentiation. What better way to do that than to lean into what makes Cheese Heads Cheese Heads? We used the insight that there’s no wrong way to eat string cheese to inspire a whole cast of string cheese characters to surround Clark, our main character.
PopIcon: Didn’t Clark Cheese Head used to look a little bit different? What went into the redesign decision for the character?
Jenny Englert: Yes, there have been a few iterations since the 1990s. The character that became Clark evolved naturally as the brand evolved and modernized. The current iteration is what inspired the style of our campaign and the surrounding cast of characters.
The Frigo Cheese Heads brand came to Saputo when we acquired the Stella Foods Inc. business in 1997 (along with the rest of the Frigo portfolio). The character was originally added to the pack in 1995 to reinforce the fun nature of string cheese (and to make the brand more appealing to a younger demographic). By the early 2000s, the character was adapted to give it a more defined and recognizable look.
In 2011, the character was made to appear more contemporary. The logo was adapted to make the “Cheese Heads guy” appear healthier as the brand worked to call out more of the nutritional claims and benefits of string cheese. The brand team conducted further research to better understand the consumer and what they were looking for in 2017. Recognizing the opportunity to move from kid-focused packaging to total family, the team did an overhaul on the entire package and reinvented the character.
Based on the research, we created a new design that was appealing to all Frigo Cheese Heads consumers (and is the design we are still using today on the outer packaging). Consumers found the current character on the pack to be friendlier, more fun, and more cheeselike.
PopIcon: Now that we know more about Clark (a lot more!), who are the string cheese characters surrounding him? Let’s break down the personalities of Sarah Swirls, Liah Light, and Cole B. Jack in addition to Clark.
JB: Clark is a classic. Probably everyone’s first friend when they moved to the (fridge) neighborhood. He likes reading more than running, tennis over football, and has (proudly) owned only four different pairs of pants since 2018.
Sarah Swirls isn’t Clark’s copilot. She’s just the second pilot. It’s not that she’s one of the guys; it’s more that all the guys want to be friends with her. Strong willed, witty, clever, and secure, she’s seen more movies than you and knows cooler bands than you.
Liah Light is young, but fierce. Never one to back down from anything, she won’t hesitate to stand up for herself to her friends, but there’s also no one more loyal. If you manage to peel back a few layers though, she has a sweet spot deep down. She loves classical music, but only when the melodies inspire punk songs.
Cole B. Jack is the new guy in town. He’s maybe a little oblivious to how this whole thing works, but just happy to be here. He’s not dumb; quite the opposite. Just a little odd. Funny without trying to be. He once spent an entire evening with the King of Monaco, without knowing that Monaco was “real.”
PopIcon: Out of all the characters, Clark is the standout and not just because he’s the original in all things string cheese. What is it about Clark that resonates with consumers?
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JB: As the leader of our Cheese Head crew, we wanted to give Clark an everyman-ness that would resonate with the widest audience. He’s genuine, eager, and plays the central figure in all the shenanigans the Cheese Heads get into. But he’s less of a Superman, and more of a John Q. Public that serves as the “glue guy” in every friend group.
PopIcon: There’s such a sense of worldbuilding baked into the main character and the supporting cast that makes them perfect to thrive on social media. What’s your approach in using these characters on platforms like Instagram to connect with audiences?
JB: Our approach on social media is to lean into how the platforms naturally work and create content that entertains, rather than just creating ads.
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From the beginning, we thought of this as more of a sitcom than an ad campaign. It allows our audience to relate more to the characters when we’re subtle and true in expressing their personalities, rather than overt and heavy-handed. It would’ve been too easy to create, for example, a sharp cheddar character with a “sharp” wit.
PopIcon: What has been the most rewarding part of working on the We Are All Cheese Heads campaign?
JB: The best part about working on We Are All Cheese Heads is the world-class brand-building, initially through episodic content, and then expanding on it through quick hits on social, gaming, and activations. When the North Star is “What would an anthropomorphic string cheese do or think?” the possibilities are as entertaining to us as they are for our audiences.
Our intent in 2024 is to continue to expand the We Are All Cheese Heads world and show up in new, exciting, and culturally relevant ways.
PopIcon: This leads us to ask what we consider to be one of the most important questions: why does string cheese deserve its own brand mascot and characters?
JB: The character and name were originally introduced in the mid-1990s, to reinforce the fun nature of string cheese and connect with a younger audience.
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Today, Frigo Cheese Heads deserves its own mascot and characters because string cheese is inherently fun, inherently silly, and frankly, already kind of human shaped as a product. It’s a classic snack that nearly everyone had as children, and most certainly doesn’t need to take itself seriously. The idea of overly corporate branding for string cheese just never made sense to us.
The character is obviously a very distinctive and differentiating asset for the brand that we believed deserved even more visibility. Building out a broader cast of characters and the world they live in helped us reinforce our belief that there’s no wrong way to eat Cheese Heads string cheese.
Image credits: Frigo Cheese Heads
About the Author
Heather Taylor is the senior writer and editor-in-chief of PopIcon, Advertising Week’s blog about brand mascots. Got a pitch on brand mascots or want to wax nostalgic about characters? Drop her a line at howveryheather@gmail.com.
