Like it or hate it, we live in country that idolizes its celebrities, perhaps like no other. We don’t have a monarchy, but we do have our movie, TV, music and sports celebrities. We simply love our celebrities, or at least most do. What other nation has had two presidents, several governors and many mayors that were celebrities before they were politicians? Only Ukraine comes to mind, whose citizens elected a professional comedian — who used to play the president on TV — to be their actual president.

If you’ve ever traveled around the globe, you’ve likely come to realize that the USA’s No. 1 exported product that has influenced millions over the past 60 years is not our food, or tech, or IP, but our movies, television shows and pop icons. Heck, you can go into the deepest remote parts of East Asia and find Humphrey Bogart, Clint Eastwood, Elvis and John Wayne fans who can’t speak a word of English, but who know these actors and have seen all their movies. I’ve experienced this.

Maybe celebrity endorsements are effective due to "success by association" in people’s minds. But examining the psychological and sociological reasons for this fascination with famous people is a topic for another day. For this blog, let’s just admit that famous folks hold a certain status that allows them enormous influence.

This ability to influence is literally worth millions, and that’s what makes buying endorsements so effective. It’s good marketing. We as a meat industry should use the power of celebrity endorsements more often. It’s a good offensive marketing strategy.

Our plant-based competitors, always working hard to be more competitive, are coming up with even better-tasting ingredients and are now displacing meat at retail meat counters nationwide. They’re effective at using paid celebrity endorsements. Just check out their websites and YouTube channels and you’ll experience their powerful iconic marketing. They are kicking our tails when it comes to using celebrity endorsements to influence consumers.

Not everyone in the meat business is sitting on the sidelines, just most. You may have heard of the recent success that McDonald’s experienced with its meal promotion using the famous rapper Travis Scott. The promotion went a "little too well" last month and McDonald’s ran out of some of the ingredients used for the Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries and a Sprite meal deal as the supply chain struggled to keep up. You can read more about it in a story Meatingplace ran last month.

McDonald’s this week started a new promotion with Colombian reggaeton celebrity J Balvin, who’s sold more than 35 million records worldwide. Go McDonald’s. That’s marketing brilliance.

So if you agree with my premise that celebrity endorsements are effective, why don’t we see more of them in meat marketing promotions? Some would argue that they’re too expensive, but I would argue that you get what you pay for and that they work. Just ask McDonald’s. They wouldn’t continue their endorsement-based marketing strategy if it didn’t pay off.

Certainly, some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that the pork, beef, soy and corn checkoff programs bring in annually could be used to pay for celebrity endorsements. Remember when our industry used to do that?

So why doesn’t the beef industry still use celebrities like Matthew McConaughey for promoting beef? Did he go vegan? I doubt it. Even if he did, there are many other celebrities that would be effective, not to mention happy to earn the easy endorsement money. We even turned one little old lady into a celebrity with the ‘Where’s the Beef?’ campaign. I think it’s high time to rethink our strategies and revisit our former successes.

I’m simply tired of getting our lunch getting handed to us when it comes to effective national marketing of the benefits of meat. Can we all just admit that, in terms of marketing, we haven’t been keeping up with the plant-based competition? We are complacent and need to get off the couch and back into the game, and at least level the playing field.

Which celebrity names do you think might be most effective in endorsing meat products?

Why doesn't the meat industry use more celebs for marketing?

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