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How Tillamook Turned Cheddar Into a Music Album for the Big Game
Tillamook's Block Jams is a 2023 integrated advertising campaign created by 72andSunny Los Angeles that presents a fictional cheddar-inspired music album featuring three original tracks across hip-hop, electronica, and R&B, airing across the United States during the Grammy Awards broadcast and the Super Bowl.
Tillamook, the 113-plus-year-old farmer-owned dairy cooperative based in Oregon, launched Block Jams in January and February 2023 as a culturally ambitious extension of its quality-and-authenticity brand positioning. The campaign announced on January 19, 2023, per prnewswire.com, introduced three original songs: the hip-hop track "Stack That Cheddar" performed by Grace Hayes, the electronica piece "C.H.D.D.R." by Carson Elliott, and the R&B number "Double Dippin' With You" by Good Boy Noah. Each artist is a musician and social media influencer, chosen to extend the campaign's reach beyond broadcast into digital and social platforms.
The campaign ran across television, digital, social, audio, and out-of-home channels in 22 local markets across the United States, according to presskitchen.com. A 15-second television execution featuring "Stack That Cheddar" published on January 24, 2023, followed by a 30-second Block Jams spot on January 30, 2023, per clapboard.com. The campaign then aired ahead of Music's Biggest Night on February 5 and during the Super Bowl on February 12 — marking Tillamook's first-ever Big Game advertisement, as reported by perishablenews.com. Block Jams is not sold in stores; Tillamook directed consumers to Tillamook.com to hear the full tracks and to their local retailer to purchase Tillamook Cheddar. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 76 out of 100, reflecting strong creative distinctiveness and cultural timing against measurable deployment scale.
Tillamook County Creamery Association is a farmer-owned dairy cooperative founded in Oregon in 1909, according to dairyprocessing.com. That heritage shapes the brand's strategic instinct to pursue cultural credibility rather than conventional product-feature advertising, particularly as competition in the United States packaged cheese category intensifies from national players such as Kraft and Cabot Creamery.
The Block Jams campaign sits within a 72andSunny-era creative strategy that combined Tillamook's quality-and-authenticity narrative with humorous, culturally distinctive executions, as documented by clapboard.com. The strategic logic is direct: in a commoditised food and drink category, emotional and cultural salience builds brand preference more durably than price or SKU differentiation alone. By framing cheddar as an object worthy of musical devotion — echoing the late-night album commercials of the 1980s and 1990s — Tillamook claimed a tone no competitor in the United States cheese aisle was occupying in early 2023.
The timing of Block Jams was deliberately layered. Launching ahead of the Grammy Awards and running through the Super Bowl placed the campaign inside two of the highest cultural-attention moments in the United States advertising calendar. Cheddar represented more than one-third of the global cheese market in 2023, according to beyondmarketinsights.com, confirming that the sub-category Tillamook competes in commands substantial consumer relevance. The use of musicians who also hold social media audiences extended the media plan beyond paid broadcast, turning each artist into an organic distribution node for the campaign across platforms where younger United States grocery shoppers spend significant time.
Director Oriol Barberà led the Block Jams production, collaborating with editor Sophia Lou to recreate the visual grammar of late-night album commercials from the 1980s and 1990s, according to oriolbarbera.net. The choice of that reference is structural rather than decorative: late-night album spots are built around earworms and repetition, the same cognitive mechanics that make a food and drink brand memorable at point of purchase. By operating inside that nostalgic format, Block Jams communicates sincerity and absurdist comedy simultaneously.
The production was executed by mixed media company LOBO and its production company partner Surreal Hotel Arts, with key crew including Director of Photography Tristan Sheridan, Production Designer Kai Boydell, Executive Producer Luis Ribeiro, Head of Production Clara Morelli, Head of Post-production Marcelo Barbosa, and Producer Pablo Zurita, all per clapboard.com. Audio mix was handled by Lime Studios, with Ben Tomastik serving as audio mixer. The sonic quality of the three tracks is central to the campaign's premise: if the music is unconvincing, the fictional album conceit collapses. Tillamook and 72andSunny invested in genre-authentic production for all three songs — hip-hop, electronica, and R&B — to sustain the joke without undercutting it.
The integrated medium campaign contains one primary media asset anchoring the television executions, supplemented by full-length track access at Tillamook.com and social distribution through the featured artists' own channels. The campaign's creative structure is self-reinforcing: the ad drives curiosity, the website delivers the full musical experience, and the artists' social presence extends reach organically across the United States. This layered distribution model reflects 72andSunny Los Angeles's approach to integrated campaign architecture within the food and drink category.
Individual Block Jams tracks surpassed 1.7 million YouTube views, according to Campaign US. Across all assets, the campaign accumulated more than 5.2 million views, as recorded by clapboard.com. These figures reflect a meaningful organic audience for a food and drink campaign built around a fictional music album — a format with no established performance benchmark in the United States cheese category.
Campaign US reviewed Block Jams in February 2023 with a mixed-positive assessment, as reported by campaignlive.com. The publication praised Tillamook's sustained commitment to music as a brand identity vehicle while describing some individual tracks as "cringe" — a reaction that, in the context of nostalgic late-night album commercial pastiche, may be a feature rather than a defect. The campaign's self-aware absurdism is designed to generate exactly that kind of polarised, shareable response.
No third-party verified sales or market share data attributable specifically to Block Jams is publicly available. Structurally, however, the campaign performs several functions simultaneously: it differentiates Tillamook from Kraft and Cabot Creamery in a cluttered United States cheese aisle, it converts Super Bowl and Grammy Awards media investment into earned social conversation, and it provides a reason for consumers to visit Tillamook.com beyond a purchase prompt. The 22-market out-of-home and local television deployment, per presskitchen.com, grounds what could have been a purely cultural stunt in genuine geographic distribution strategy across the United States. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 76 out of 100 reflects that balance of creative ambition and practical media execution.
Block Jams is a 2023 integrated advertising campaign by Tillamook and 72andSunny Los Angeles. It presents a fictional cheddar-inspired music album featuring three original tracks across hip-hop, electronica, and R&B. The campaign aired in the United States during the Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl, with full tracks available at Tillamook.com.
Block Jams was created by agency 72andSunny Los Angeles for Tillamook County Creamery Association. Director Oriol Barberà and editor Sophia Lou led the visual execution. Production and post-production were handled by LOBO and Surreal Hotel Arts, with audio mix by Lime Studios and audio mixer Ben Tomastik.
The Block Jams album contains three original tracks. Grace Hayes performs the hip-hop song "Stack That Cheddar," Carson Elliott delivers the electronica track "C.H.D.D.R.," and Good Boy Noah performs the R&B song "Double Dippin' With You." All three artists are musicians and social media influencers selected to extend the campaign's organic reach.
Block Jams marked Tillamook's first-ever Big Game advertisement, according to perishablenews.com. The campaign also aired ahead of the Grammy Awards broadcast on February 5, 2023. This dual placement gave Tillamook premium national exposure across two of the United States' highest-profile cultural broadcast moments within a single campaign window.
The Block Jams campaign accumulated more than 5.2 million views across its assets, as recorded by clapboard.com. Individual tracks surpassed 1.7 million YouTube views, according to Campaign US. The campaign ran across 22 local markets in the United States, covering television, digital, social, audio, and out-of-home channels.
Block Jams is not sold in stores. Tillamook directed consumers to Tillamook.com to hear the full tracks. Tillamook Cheddar itself is available at local retailers across the United States. The three featured artists also distributed the tracks through their own social media channels, extending the campaign's reach organically beyond paid broadcast placements.
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