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Special coverage from the National Pork Forum in Kansas City, Mo., March 4-6, 2010
After more than 20 years of positioning pork as "The Other White Meat," pork producers are preparing to reposition their product -- with a new agency, a new strategy and a new tagline - members of the National Pork Board were advised yesterday and delegates to the National Pork Act were told this morning.
The new shift will begin next year and will be "very powerfully launched," said David Selby, president of Schafer, Condon, Carter in Chicago, Ill., a communications house that was retained by the Pork Board just two weeks ago.
"The business of brand building is very complex," he said, but Schafer Condon has the experience and people to do the work, he said in introducing the company to the Pork Board. "We know challenger brands" like pork that are not the market leader but are growing, he said, adding that "we are ourselves a challenger brand."
"We know associations and cooperatives," having done work for the beef checkoff, the veal checkoff, Idaho potatoes and Land O'Lakes Inc., he said, and "we know protein," having done work for several meat processors.
Gwen Friedow, Shafer Condon vice president for strategic planning, said pork is "a remarkable protein" and noted that the "other white" campaign "has effectively addressed" issues related to pork that consumers need to appreciate to embrace the product but has not prompted market growth.
The new promotion will pull together producers, packers, processors, restaurateurs and retailers "to interact with consumers to drive demand," she said. Consumers are just not comfortable preparing pork, she said, and "we need to disrupt that behavior, we need to get past that inertia, and we need to get them thinking about pork in new ways."
"Our opportunity," she said, "is to be pork - not beef, not chicken."
Friedow released a brief concept video commercial that ended with the tagline "We Are Pork," with "Pork" in the familiar blue pic. She emphasized, though, that this was a concept and not a final decision on a new tagline.
In response to a question concerning the future of "other white," Friedow and Selby both said the concept is not one to walk away from. Friedow said the phrase "tells consumers pork is healthful and lean like chicken but does not offer consumers enough reason to buy pork."
However, "that is not a casual question," Selby said, pointing to how "other white" is one of the five most-recognized taglines in the world, with more than 90% recall awareness. "We don't take that lightly, but we need to look to the future," he said.
The Pork Board is a 15-member board that manages the national pork checkoff, and delegates to the Pork Act are pork producers who advise the board on policy matters. The Pork Forum houses the spring meeting of the Pork Board and annual business meetings of the Pork Act and National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). | 
