When you’re selling cheese, it’s probably a good idea not to take yourself too seriously.

That’s the thinking behind Armstrong Cheese’s new tv spot, ‘Bomber.’

The 30-second spot – the Vancouver-based company’s first foray into television – features a biplane flying over a dreary city. The pilot heaves blocks of Armstrong cheese onto the gray and grimy buildings, as the voice-over intones: ‘We bring you the taste of fresh air, green grass and clean living.’

Those sections of the city touched by the cheese are transformed into pastoral farmlands, complete with cows and red barns. Finally, the spot closes in on a Chanel-clad urban socialite tottering down the street in high heels, a poodle by her side. When the cheese lands beside her, she becomes a milkmaid, while her pooch turns bovine. The tag line: ‘Cheese Tastes Better Here.’

Why this approach? Because no one, says Dean Elissat, account supervisor with Armstrong’s Vancouver-based agency Lanyon Phillips BBDO Communications, is the least bit interested in earnest cheese commercials.

Don’t mistake the light tone of the tv spot for the company’s overall philosophy, however. Armstrong Cheese, which has existed as a brand in Western Canada since 1902, is making its way eastward, and plans to become the country’s No. 2 brand, after stalwart Kraft Canada.

Until now, Elissat says, Armstrong Cheese has not had a strong positioning. But its move last April to purchase the cheese division of McCain Foods, which markets the DairyFresh brand in Ontario and the Maritimes, doubled the company’s size in one day, and forced it to reconsider its equity.

(A little background here: Armstrong was spun off as an independent subsidiary of Dairyworld Foods this past spring, as a condition of the purchase of McCain’s cheese division. Dairyworld is the food-manufacturing arm of Agrifoods International Co-operative, Western Canada’s largest milk-producing co-operative, which lists 1,800 dairy farmers across b.c., Alberta and Saskatchewan on its membership roster.)

According to Andrew MacCulloch, Armstrong’s director of marketing, consumer research indicated that the brand’s strength lay in its heritage as a premium cheese made by actual dairy farmers.

The company decided to leverage this farm-fresh reputation by adopting an image that would contrast with those of other top brands, most of which have associations with ‘mass production.’

‘We wanted to get across the idea that Armstrong Cheese is healthy and wholesome – a real farm cheese,’ MacCulloch says.

To introduce the new positioning, the company decided that new packaging would be in order.

Armstrong’s former packaging, Elissat says, was decidedly generic, and didn’t stand out against its competition. So the abstract blocks of color that dominated the old package were replaced by an image of cows in a pasture surrounded by mountains.

To differentiate between the various Armstrong skus, the block cheeses are now identified by squares of color corresponding to their flavors.

In addition to improved graphics, the new packaging also boasts a Ziploc closure to ensure convenience and freshness.

The tv brand spot is supported by p-o-p materials, all of which feature barnyard images and the injunction to ‘Choose Real Farm Cheese,’ as well as an in-store contest.

Although Armstrong’s parent, Dairyworld, is one of the top 15 food companies in Canada, with its business equally divided between food service, private label and public consumption, it’s still relatively unknown outside of Western Canada, MacCulloch says. And that could present obstacles for the Armstrong brand in the east.

After the purchase of the McCain cheese division, the company conducted extensive research on brand equity. The conclusion: what Armstrong is to the west, so McCain is to the east.

Armstrong enjoys a 13 share in Western Canada (with its strongest hold in b.c.), ranking second after Kraft, but has no presence whatever in the east. The McCain brand, on the other hand, has little presence in the west, ranks third in Ontario behind Kraft and Black Diamond, and owns a healthy second-place 15 share in the Maritimes.

Accordingly, Armstrong has decided not to mess too much with a good thing. Rather than launch the brand into the east in one fell swoop, the company will take a more gradual approach. Starting in November, ‘transitional’ packaging will appear in dairy cases throughout Ontario and the Maritimes. It will be similar to the current packaging for McCain’s DairyFresh brand, but will feature the Armstrong logo.

An ad campaign, meanwhile, will introduce eastern Canadians to the change in ownership, and to the Armstrong brand, MacCulloch says.

That’s only one of the challenges involved in melding two cheese companies into one. There’s also the matter of product consistency. Right now, MacCulloch says, DairyFresh cheddar tastes quite different from Armstrong cheddar – an issue that the company will probably have to deal with down the line.

Also in this report:

– McDonald’s fills craving for western creative: Fast-food marketer is among a handful of national advertisers to support regional branding efforts p.28

– The B.C. Lower Mainland: National advertisers still reluctant to invest in west p.28

– BC TEL Yellow Pages packs survival kit: Ultimate Source repositioning broadens image to include other services such as Talking Yellow Pages and Web site