Bready or not, the J&PB is here. Smucker’s® and Jif® are putting a playful twist on one of the world’s most iconic sandwiches: the peanut butter and jam. Meet the J&PB — jam on top, peanut butter on the bottom.
What began as a lighthearted flip soon turned into something more. When the order of ingredients changed, so did the taste — a discovery that sparked debate and demanded a closer look. Intrigued, the team ran real-world taste tests. The results? Flipping the sandwich didn’t just look different; some people thought it tasted different. They had created something entirely new from the exact same PB&J sandwich flipped upside down.
“With the J&PB, the goal was to take something so familiar and make it feel new again,” said Adam Zitney, Vice President, Marketing at The J.M. Smucker Co. “By flipping the order and putting Smucker’s Jam on top, we created a playful take on the PB&J that invites people to debate, laugh, and rediscover two of their favourite pantry staples in a fresh way.”
The campaign was strategically teased ahead of launch with a spot featuring Toronto Blue Jays players Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer. Airing during game broadcasts and online, the ad seeded the idea of flipping a PB&J into a J&PB, with Guerrero Jr. proudly flipping his sandwich and naming it on camera — creating early buzz and framing the conversation before the national rollout.
Leo Toronto developed the campaign, turning a playful flip into a serious creative exercise and uncovering a new way to frame one of the most familiar food pairings, challenging people to “try it for the first time.”
The simple inversion of jam on top and peanut butter on the bottom was intended as a playful twist on a familiar classic. But the switch did more than change appearances. It unlocked a surprising new experience for some, showing that even the smallest twist can transform a classic. And get people talking about PB&J again.
“The creative approach from the beginning was simple: take this joke as seriously as we could,” said Kohl Forsberg, Executive Creative Director at Leo Toronto. “But as we went deeper, we saw that some people legitimately thought it tasted different. That gave us a bigger story, one that’s still having fun with itself, but also rooted in a potentially real discovery. And that just adds to the humour as we blur the line between the story and reality. All because we just flipped a sandwich upside down.”
The New Taste, Explained
In taste tests, people debated whether the J&PB was better than a traditional PB&J. To understand why, the team turned to Danielle Binns, a Certified Nutritional Practitioner. She explains: “The J&PB creates a new neurological pathway in the brain, which creates a different perception of the sandwich.”
How to Make a J&PB
1. Spread Smucker’s® Jam on one slice of bread.
2. Spread Jif® Peanut Butter on the other slice.
3. Put them together.
4. Flip 180°, so the jam is on top.
5. Debate if it’s different.
The campaign is rolling out across TV, digital, social, and live taste-test activations nationwide, with phases designed to feed curiosity, spark conversation, and prove that even the simplest ideas can be completely reimagined.
