Artisanal Brands and Smile Train Launch 'Say Cheese … Share a Smile!' Campaign

Press release (Feb. 15, 2012) — Today Artisanal Brands Inc. launched a yearlong campaign to work with Smile Train in its cure of clefts around the world. The campaign, “Say Cheese … Share a Smile!” was developed around the communal nature of Artisanal’s monthly cheese club that will now include a donation of $250 to Smile Train for every annual membership to the club. The monthly shipments from Artisanal consist of four handcrafted, cave-aged cheeses weighing approximately two pounds and enough for eight people to share. The campaign was designed to generate 12 months of awareness about Smile Train among the club members and their own social networks.

Smile Train was founded in 1999, and has become the world’s largest cleft charity with over 2,200 partner surgeons operating in over 1,100 partner hospitals and has helped children in over 80 countries — many of the world’s poorest. Smile Train provides free cleft lip and palate surgery to children from poor families that give a child not just a new smile, but also a chance at a new life. Every year more than 165,000 children are born with cleft lips and palates and the cost of this corrective surgery can be as little as $250.

Artisanal's President and CEO, Daniel Dowe remarked, "We were delighted at the reception we received from Smile Train to work with us on this campaign. The viral nature of the program became clear pretty fast, as we will create a whole new meaning to the universal expression to Say Cheese! to cause a smile. In homes and in offices across the country our Club members will be sharing their monthly deliveries of cheese to celebrate the curing of a child. We are often told you can taste the difference in the quality of our aged cheeses, but with Smile Train, we are now making a difference. The bottom line is, if, through this program, one child receives this life-saving surgery, or thousands of children do, it's a reason for us all to smile. We hope it's the latter.”

“We are fortunate to be working with Artisanal Brands Inc. to highlight the work we do and to bring much needed attention to our cause,” says Priscilla Ma, Executive Director of Smile Train. “Because of partnerships like this with Artisanal, Smile Train can continue to do the life-changing work we do all over the world and provide children born with a cleft, the opportunity to live a full and productive life.”