Decades ago, ads pitched Geritol tonic as the cure for “tired blood.” Now, a dairy product is being proposed as the antidote to “matzah fatigue.” Matzah fatigue could be classified as among “Passover problems,” the puzzles that perplex Jews who celebrate the eight-day holiday, which begins at sunset on Monday. It is a fanciful expression, to be sure, but it does address what is, for many, an issue each year: Around the third day, the palate often begins to rebel against a steady diet of foods that are kosher for Passover like matzah, the unleavened bread also known as matzo or matzoh.

Enter the dairy product, Temp Tee, the whipped cream cheese sold by the Kraft Foods Group. A campaign that began this month, ahead of the start of Passover, declares that Temp Tee offers a culinary solution to the repetitious holiday regimen.

The campaign, with a budget estimated at less than $100,000, is centered on a partnership between Temp Tee and Jamie Geller, an American-born Israeli food writer and chef who is the founder of the Kosher Media Network, known for its Joy of Kosher brand. Ms. Geller, who describes herself as “a lifelong devotee” of Temp Tee, is serving as the brand’s advocate among those who observe the holiday, offering them recipes and ideas for dairy dishes that are made with whipped cream cheese and are kosher for Passover.

Among the suggestions — which can be found on a section of the Joy of Kosher Web site as well as in a booklet that can be downloaded from the site — are raspberry macarons with cream cheese filling, salmon with shiitake mushroom and tomato cream cheese sauce, creamy colorful coleslaw roasted red pepper and arugula flatbread matzah pizza, sundried tomato and brie stuffed mushrooms, Passover cheese quiche and flourless cream cheese pound cake with passion fruit cream cheese ice cream.

The campaign also includes video clips featuring Ms. Geller; Ms. Geller’s presence in social media like blogs and Facebook; the Temp Tee fan page on Facebook; comments on Twitter using the hashtag and appearances by Ms. Geller at stores like Fairway.

Appropriately enough for a campaign with so many elements that are in digital and social media, the work is being created by 360i in New York, a digital marketing agency that is part of the Dentsu Network division of Dentsu.

The campaign is indicative of efforts by mainstream marketers to take advantage of the growing interest among consumers in foods that are kosher or kosher for Passover. In the case of Kraft Foods and its predecessor companies, that interest dates to the days when Geritol was the treatment for tired blood.

Perhaps the best-known example is the campaigns aimed at Jewish consumers for Maxwell House coffee, which began in 1923, and have been centered since 1932 on the publication of a Passover Haggadah, the book read at the Seder table to retell the story of the exodus from Egypt.

Temp Tee was introduced in 1927, according to Kraft Foods, and was part of the Breakstone Brothers company, based in New York City, that Kraft Foods says was started in 1882. The National Dairy Products Corporation bought Breakstone in 1928 and two years later acquired what was then called Kraft-Phenix Cheese. (National Dairy became Kraftco in 1969 and Kraft in 1976.)

The recent history of the Breakstone’s dairy products is a little complicated. The familiar pink eight-ounce tubs of Temp Tee no longer bear the Breakstone’s name; they now read “Uniquely New York since 1927.” (“New York” may have a double meaning, referring to Upstate New York, where Temp Tee is made at a Kraft Foods plant in Lowville, as well as the Big Apple.)

The Breakstone’s trademark is licensed by Kraft Foods to a company called Dairy Farmers of America for Breakstone’s butter products. And although there were reports last fall that Kraft Foods was considering selling the Breakstone’s cottage cheese and sour cream business, packages of those products are still labeled as being made by Kraft Foods.

In any event, Temp Tee and Breakstone’s products have long been popular with consumers in New York and the Eastern Seaboard as well as Jewish consumers. The connection between Temp Tee and Passover matzah is that because it is whipped, Temp Tee is easier to spread on each oh-so-crumbly matzah than regular cream cheeses like a Kraft Foods sibling, Philadelphia.

“About 75 percent of the volume of Temp Tee is sold in the New York region, metro New York,” says Brant Wheaton, senior associate brand manager for Temp Tee at Kraft Foods in Glenview, Ill., with the rest concentrated in markets like Boston and Miami.

And “20 percent of the volume” each year comes during the Jewish holidays of Passover and Yom Kippur, he adds.

Temp Tee is “a little gem,” Mr. Wheaton says, a “niche brand” that he and other executives wanted to “do something a little more creative” with than conventional tacks like coupons or banner ads.

That led to the idea of “digging in to try to understand what’s going on with Passover these days and how to be relevant,” he adds.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/business/media/temp-tee-urges-shoppers-to-whip-up-passover-dishes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss