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Pork
Checkoff Celebrates 20 Years
of Progress
While the
world’s attention in 1985 focused on arms control
summits between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. pork producers
were making history of their own with the creation
of a new Pork Checkoff.
“We were so fortunate to have bold leaders with
wisdom and a vision for the future,” said Danita
Rodibaugh, an Indiana pork producer and president of
the National Pork Board. “Sometimes I wonder if
they knew the future they were about to write.”
When President Reagan signed the landmark Pork
Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act
into law in December 1985, a simple signature
forever changed the direction of the pork industry
in America. By the end of 1986, the resulting
national Pork Checkoff was in place, and the
National Pork Board had been formed.
The
Checkoff that pork producers created 20 years ago
worked then, and it works now, said Orville Sweet,
former chief executive officer on the National Pork
Producers Council.
“The most powerful force in the world is the
leverage resulting from organization,” Sweet said.
“We’re the Cadillac of the meat industry right now,
not because we’re selling the most, but because
we’re selling the best.”
Producers Bet Checkoff’s Future on Other White Meat®
“We’re the Cadillac of the meat industry right now,
not because we’re selling the most, but because
we’re selling the best.”
This transformation didn’t happen by accident. In
the mid-1980s, producers knew pork needed an extreme
makeover to beat the legacy left over from the World
War II era, when fat was valued as a premium with
pork. “Lean” had become the buzzword of the day, and
chicken was quickly becoming the meat of choice for
millions of consumers. “Twenty years ago, pork was
viewed as a cheap protein source and an
unsophisticated product,” recalled Heidi Vittetoe, a
pork producer from Washington, Iowa.
Change wasn’t easy, though. At a time when the pork
industry’s slogan was “Pork-what a good idea,” the
1986 debut of the Pork Checkoff’s Pork. The Other
White Meat® seemed downright blasphemous to many
producers. How could pork sink so low as to compare
itself to chicken, the dominant protein of the
health-conscious 1980s?
“There were a few fists pounded and some voices
raised,” recalled Mark Williams, a former account
supervisor with Bozell, the advertising agency that
presented the revolutionary concept during a meeting
at Iowa’s Hotel Ft. Des Moines. “The proposal was
startling and contradictory to what people were
expecting, but we believed it could make marketing
history.”
Looking back, it’s easy to forget that much more
than an advertising campaign was riding on this
proposal. In 1986, pork producers had agreed to
create the new Pork Checkoff on a trial basis.
Within 18 months, they would vote about whether they
wanted to continue funding the program.
“A
tremendous amount of credit needs to be given to the
people who decided to go with Pork. The Other White
Meat,” Williams said. “They bet the Pork Checkoff on
it.”
Long before Bozell made that memorable presentation
at the Hotel Ft. Des Moines, its creative team
pulled out all the stops to develop Pork. The Other
White Meat.
Recognizing that the new Pork Checkoff involved a
sizable marketing investment, the agency knew pork
needed a big idea to reposition itself and make that
investment pay off.
“At the time, chicken had everything going for it
and pork had almost nothing going for it, except for
maybe its flavor,” Williams said. “Consumers
believed pork was fatty, high in calories, unhealthy
and bad for you in every way.”
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Pork
Lean as Chicken?
Then came a shocking revelation. When the agency
began researching the facts about chicken and fresh
pork, they found that the two meats’ nutritional
profiles were much more similar than anyone had
believed. Thanks to the era’s leaner hogs, pork had
become a versatile, healthy source of protein, but
it still suffered from a severe consumer perception
problem.
What if pork became The Other White Meat? Long
before Bozell presented the concept to pork
producers, the team tested the slogan with target
market consumers, comparing the results against four
other potential campaigns.
“None of the other campaigns came close to moving
the needle like The Other White Meat,” Williams
noted. “Without this testing, The Other White Meat
wouldn’t exist.”
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Consumers Change their Attitudes about Pork
When pork producers decided to take a chance on The
Other White Meat, the slogan enjoyed phenomenal
success right from the start. After 10 weeks of ads
in target cities, the number of people who thought
of pork as white meat jumped from 12 percent to 72
percent. Within a few years, The Other White Meat
had become the fifth most recognized advertising
slogan in America.
“The Pork Checkoff’s Other White Meat advertising
campaign did more to change the perception of pork
and demand for pork than any other one thing,” said
Ray Hankes, a pork producer who now works for Tyson.
Provocative print and television advertisements with
messages such as, “We lead you to temptation but
deliver you from evil,” helped pork compete
head-to-head with chicken.
“We
wanted to stop people in their tracks and ask how
pork could be a white meat,” Williams said.
To
show that pork was as easy to prepare as chicken and
more versatile, Bozell took 40 poultry recipes like
chicken cordon bleu and transformed them into
pork-based entrees that were featured in the
advertising campaign.
“The
Pork Checkoff’s Other White Meat campaign did more
to change the perception of pork and demand for pork
than any other one thing.”
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Peggy
Fleming Speaks Up for Pork
The
Pork Checkoff also recruited figure-skating icon
Peggy Fleming, a farm girl who won the gold medal at
the 1968 Olympic Winter Games and captured three
straight World Championship titles, to be an
ambassador for the pork industry.
“Peggy was America’s sweetheart and brought a sense
of excitement to the Pork Checkoff,” Williams
recalled. “She helped the pork industry attract
media attention before The Other White Meat campaign
even started running.”
Fleming, an advocate of health and wellness, made
appearances at the American Pork Congress, the
predecessor of the World Pork Expo. She also
participated in a live video news conference
broadcast from a Los Angeles grocery store. In
short order, headlines like “Peggy Fleming Pitches
Pork” began appearing in major publications across
the country.
The
results of Pork. The Other White Meat were
astounding, considering that this was the pork
industry’s first significant advertising campaign
ever.
“We
learned early on that we’d strapped ourselves to a
rocket,” Williams said.
In
a very short time, pork producers had set out to
change people’s minds about pork with the innovative
campaign. And when producers voted whether to
continue the Checkoff in the fall of 1988, the
referendum passed by more than 80 percent, recalled
Jim Meimann, executive vice president of governance
and operations for Pork Checkoff.
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Building
a Solid Future
As
the Pork. The Other White Meat campaign continued
to win new customers, producers continued their
march toward achieving quality standards in the pork
industry. This has been aided through various
educational tools and programs created by the
Checkoff during the last 20 years.
One
of the most notable programs, Pork Quality
Assurance™ (PQA), was created in 1989 to emphasize
best practices in the handling and use of animal
health products. The Youth PQA program, launched in
2004, helps young people learn how to produce safe,
nutritious pork.
Managing industry-threatening diseases is
progressing on farms across America thanks to
Checkoff-funded tools and strategies.
Consider the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory
Syndrome Initiative. The collaborative effort
between producers, academia, industry and government
has defined the research and educational needs of
pork producers and veterinarians to accelerate the
successful management of PRRS.
In
addition, increased public awareness of animal
welfare has required pork producers to continually
reevaluate their management practices. The Pork
Checkoff-funded Swine Welfare Assurance ProgramSM
(SWAP) was launched in 2003 to help producers
objectively assess and benchmark the care and
welfare of their pigs and implement best practices
in their operations.
Checkoff-funded educational programs to help pork
producers be good stewards of the environment also
remain a priority. These programs, including the
Environmental Steward awards, focus on nutrient
management, air and water quality, federal and sTaste
regulations, and neighbor relations.
As
it has for 20 years, the Pork Checkoff will continue
to help producers meet the challenges of the future.
“The can-do attitude of the people in this industry
and the way they work together to solve problems and
issues is one of the great things about pork
producers,” Rodibaugh said. “The 20th anniversary
of the Pork Checkoff shows how good things happen
when people get together to share ideas, share funds
and share dreams.”
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NPPC and
the National Pork Board Separate
Hog prices
collapsed in the fall of 1998, taking thousands of
producers down with them. One producer leader
called it the industry's version of the Great
Depression's Black Friday. Another wrote to
President Bill Clinton to inform him that “the
economic crisis facing America's pork producers must
be viewed as a national emergency.” The
catastrophic price collapse also triggered profound
changes in the structure of the pork industry's
promotion and public policy organizations. At the
beginning of 1998, the National Pork Producers
Council (NPPC), the industry's public-policy
organization, had about 100 employees and was
administering, under contract, about $50 million of
Checkoff money annually for the promotion, research
and consumer information programs of the National
Pork Board. The Pork Board had two employees to
oversee collections and monitor contracts.
Shortly after the price collapse that drove prices
below Depression-era levels, the Campaign for Family
Farms, a group of Midwestern producers, collected
about 20,000 signatures on a petition asking the
secretary of agriculture to call a referendum on the
continuation of the Pork Checkoff. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture certified about 10,500 of
those signatures - more than 5,000 fewer than
required under department rules - but U.S. Secretary
of Agriculture Dan Glickman authorized the
referendum for the fall of 2000.
On
Jan. 11, 2001, just days before the Clinton
administration would end, Glickman announced the
results - 15,591 votes against continuing the
Checkoff program and 14,396 for - and ordered the
termination of the Checkoff. NPPC officials
immediately sought and were granted an injunction to
stop Glickman's order pending a further court
challenge of the Checkoff's legality.
In
the meantime, new U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann
Veneman, responding to complaints about the
referendum process, announced a restructuring
agreement that she said would “ensure the separation
of the National Pork Board and NPPC and make the
program more responsive to concerns of pork
producers.”
The
restructuring required the National Pork Board by
July 1, 2001, to:
-
employ its own
management and staff, including the chief
executive officer and chief financial officer;
-
manage separate
contracts for promotion, research and consumer
information projects;
-
maintain separate
office operations from the NPPC; and
-
maintain separate
communications from NPPC.
She
also ordered that “no earlier than June 2003,” the
USDA would conduct a survey of eligible pork
producers and importers to determine if 15 percent
of those eligible favor a referendum. (Rules for
that survey, delayed by a challenge to the
Checkoff's constitutionality that reached the U.S.
Supreme Court in 2005, are now being written by
USDA.)
NPPC announced at the same time that it would focus
only on policy-related legislative and regulatory
issues funded from voluntary contributions.
The
agreement, which ultimately was validated by a
federal judge who concluded that the 2000 referendum
had not been conducted lawfully, took place on
schedule in 2001 and remains in place today.
Details of the Separation Agreement and a more
complete history of the organizations are available
on pork.org, the National Pork Board's Web site.
Both can be found under the News and Information
tab. The history can be found in the online version
of the Quick Facts Handbook.
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