I’ve tiptoed around it. But it’s time we really talked about the most famous marketing campaign that ever was in the pork industry. That’s right: Pork. The Other White Meat.

Lauded as one of the greatest slogans of all time, it certainly has proven its staying power. If you’re like me, as soon as someone hears that you work in the pork industry or sees you wearing the infamous blue Pork pic, they’re going to say, “The other white meat, right?” If I have time, they get an explanation about how pork is actually a red meat and why, from a scientific standpoint, that’s important, even if previous marketers fudged a little on the facts.

Of course, the goal of The Other White Meat was to position pork as a healthful (and dare I say tastier?!) alternative to chicken or fish. And it worked. Maybe too well. There are consumers (and producers) today who would argue our industry bred all the flavor out of modern pork by making it too lean. While it’s a hot debate with many salient points on both sides, I’ll leave that debate for another day (or, more likely, the comments below).

As a marketer, I completely understand why this campaign was launched when it was, and honestly, you can’t argue its success. But its success has brought challenges to marketers in 2020.

We face the headwind of years of poor eating experiences and, while we have made progress with messaging around cooking pork to 145 degrees with a 3-minute rest, the masses don’t use meat thermometers. And they don't want to see pink in their pork chop. “White meat shouldn’t be pink! I need to cook it until it’s white (and dry).”

For better and worse, The Other White Meat still finds itself in our collective lexicon.

But it’s time for us to move past the unfortunate unintended consequences of yesterday’s marketing. It’s time to stop focusing on hues on the color palette, and start focusing on where we can make real progress.

Pork was never the “other.” It was, and is, the “original.” It’s the most widely consumed protein on the planet. You want authentic cuisine from Asia, Latin America or Europe? That protein should be from a pig. It’s authentic. It can be exceptional. It has the potential to be “old-school cool” with the younger generations who are starting to make their own purchasing, cooking and eating decisions. Playing off on last month’s blog, the pig is the “OG.”

Despite our challenges, we’ve got a ton of opportunity ahead of us. But engaging this next generation is going to take more than a slogan and a campaign. If we want to be memorable, relevant, and chosen at restaurants and retail, we’ve got to get real.

They want to know how to cook it properly — and through the use of social media and YouTube, we’ve done a ton of work in that space. But they also want to know more about the process and the pig before it ended up in the meat case.

They want to see inside our buildings. They want to know all the things we tell them about sustainability and animal welfare and judicious use of antibiotics are true. They want to know where their food is coming from.

Yet, we hesitate. We don’t answer the call to talk about our farms, our families and our passion for feeding the world. Why? Maybe we’re afraid. Maybe we’re too humble. Maybe we think somebody else is going to do it.

I can promise you this: Whether you’re a pig farmer, processor, retailer or restaurateur, no one will tell your story better than you do. And while it is my profound pleasure to work for America’s 60,000 pig farmers and work with a team of really smart marketers to build out the master brand of Real Pork, the truth is that it just won’t work without having everyone in this industry behind it at some level. Much like our industry rallied behind The Other White Meat, we must embrace the opportunity to show consumers who we really are. A delicious, nutritious, convenient and versatile red meat, steeped in rich traditions handed down from generation to generation, and responsibly grown by producers who are proud to feed the world.

Demonstrating our authenticity to consumers might feel like pushing water uphill for a while. But we start where we are. And in 24 years, who knows … Real Pork could be the G.O.A.T.

Not the “other” anything

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