Bergader's First Thjnk Campaign Trades the Cows for the Alps
German cheese brand Bergader has unveiled 'Dein Bisschen Alpen' (Your Bit of Alps), its first campaign from new lead agency Thjnk, abandoning the category's familiar cow-and-pasture imagery to sell an Alpine feeling of everyday escape instead.
Escaping the Category Cliché
Bergader, the German cheese specialist, has launched its first campaign since appointing Thjnk as lead agency. Titled 'Dein Bisschen Alpen', it deliberately turns away from the cows, pastures and mountain postcards that dominate dairy advertising, and instead transplants everyday life into an Alpine setting, offering a small moment of escape.
In a category where nearly every brand shows the same green fields and contented cattle, choosing not to is itself a competitive act.
Why Ditching the Cows Is Smart
Category conventions make brands invisible. When everyone uses the same visual language, advertising blurs into a generic 'dairy' wallpaper that builds the category but not the brand. Breaking the code is how you get noticed and remembered.
Selling a feeling rather than the product also lifts Bergader out of a pure price and provenance fight. 'A bit of Alps' in your day is an emotional benefit that is far harder for a private-label rival to copy than a picture of a cow.
Marketing Minute's Take
The best category-challenging work starts by identifying the clichés everyone else defaults to, then deliberately doing the opposite. Bergader and Thjnk have spotted that dairy advertising is a sea of sameness and used that as the opportunity, which is exactly how distinctive brands are built.
For any marketer in a convention-bound category, the exercise is simple and powerful: list what every competitor does, then ask what would happen if you refused to. Distinctiveness rarely comes from doing the category norm slightly better; it comes from breaking it on purpose.
Quick FAQ
What is Bergader's 'Dein Bisschen Alpen' campaign?
It's Bergader's first campaign from new agency Thjnk. Instead of the usual cows and pastures, it places everyday life in an Alpine setting to sell a feeling of small, everyday escape.
Why move away from cow imagery?
Because category conventions make brands invisible. When every dairy brand uses the same visuals, ads build the category, not the brand. Breaking the code is how you get noticed and remembered.
What's the lesson for marketers?
List what every competitor in your category does, then ask what happens if you refuse to. Distinctiveness comes from deliberately breaking category conventions, not doing them slightly better.
Every dairy ad shows the same cow in the same green field — which means none of them are memorable. Bergader and Thjnk spotting that sameness and refusing to join it is exactly how distinctive brands are built. Want to stand out? List what your whole category does, then have the nerve to do the opposite. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
Distinctiveness comes from deliberately breaking category conventions — not from doing the category norm slightly better.
What visual cliché does your entire category default to — and what would happen if you refused to use it?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: HORIZONT, Campaign Germany (September 2026).
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
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