Maybe, like me, you've tried to scale back or give up dairy. Perhaps it's because of the ecological toll of the massive water usage cattle require, or simply because dairy twists your guts up in ever-more-Gordian knots as you age.

But wait, you say, I'm here to read about ads, not some rando's aging digestive system. Well don't worry, I assure you they're interconnected.

In a new campaign from agency TDA Boulder, non-dairy cheese brand Daiya does something subtle but important: it positions its faux cheese as just cheese...that happens to not be dairy. The ads are cute and simple, playing on a pretty basic theme of craving. There's no lecture on responsible veganism or lengthy backstory on how they got their recipe just right.

The campaign's subtle swagger is that Daiya is a 1-to-1 substitute for cheese, which doesn't sound like much but 100% is.

Why? Because fake cheese has been bad. Like baaaaad. Allow me to reiterate that it has been baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

If you're used to non-dairy milks and the new generation of plant-based meats like Beyond and Impossible, you might assume non-dairy cheese would be equally acceptable. But until very recently, you'd have been wrong.

As my colleague T.L. Stanley reports in her Adweek piece about the campaign, fake cheese is (like its cousin, fake eggs) having a moment. Recipes are improving rapidly, along with consumer demand.

The fake cheese category has grown 51% since 2017, a time during which dairy cheese has grown just 5%. Non-dairy cheese is still a small slice of the plant-based pie, but you can definitely look for it to grow in leaps and bounds over the coming months and years.

When I tried giving up dairy a few years back, cheese was my one stumbling block. The non-dairy options were, across the board, just absolutely gross. I later learned from my favorite food podcast, Gastropod, that there's a long history to why food scientists have struggled to get cheese right (if you're a food nerd, you should definitely listen to that episode).

Have you tried fake cheese, especially recently? Let me know how your experience went at the email below or at @Griner on Twitter.

David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
David.Griner@Adweek.com

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