KANSAS CITY, Missouri – How much are four words worth?
Well, if those four words are “the other white meat,” they’re worth $60 million US – at least to the U.S. hog farmers’ national organization.
That’s what the checkoff-funded National Pork Board paid the National Pork Producers Council to take possession of the famous advertising slogan. The pork board represents the common interests of all hog farmers and the NPPC is funded by voluntary contributions from only some producers.
Pork board president Danita Rodibaugh said she thinks it is worth the cost to own one of the top five most recognized commercial brands in the United States.
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“We thought all pork producers should own it,” said Rodibaugh, an Indiana hog producer.
Focus group testing and surveys showed “the other white meat” remains a well-liked slogan.
“We established that there was value in the ‘pork: the other white meat’ and the value was so great that it would become our brand, and as we looked at continuing to invest in developing that brand we thought that this from a business standpoint made the most sense for pork producers,” said Rodibaugh.
The pork board was formed in 1986 to take over pork promotional efforts from the NPPC, which was focused on political lobbying. The famous phrase had recently been developed by the NPPC, and it maintained ownership of the trademark, so the pork board worked out a lease arrangement for using the phrase in its campaigns. The more valuable the phrase, the more the board would pay.
The pork board now pays $818,000 to the NPPC every year for the rights to use the phrase, and Rodibaugh said paying $3 million per year for the next 20 years might end up costing the same as continuing to lease it if the value of the phrase keeps increasing.
“In our wildest dreams, we would never have imagined how successful that trademark could be and how recognizable it would be in the United States,” she said.
Throughout the pork board’s annual convention,”the other white meat” campaign was praised for lifting and improving the image of pork, which in the early 1980s was often viewed as a fatty, unhealthy, boring meat.
The motto helped convince a generation of consumers to see pork as a lighter meat, which was helped by hog breeding that minimized the fat content of the animals.
A few years ago, the pork board began reducing its use of the phrase because it thought it might be losing its relevance with U.S. consumers, Rodibaugh said, but research showed that it was still popular and effective.
The phrase now ranks up there with “snap, crackle and pop” and “don’t squeeze the Charmin” as the most recognizable phrases in commercial parlance, according to pork board research.
Last year, the pork board introduced a new campaign targeting 25- to 40-year-old urban women, the demographic group that makes most supermarket meat purchases. It included the “the other white meat” phrase as part of the campaign.
That wasn’t controversial, but the campaign’s new central phrase of “don’t be blah”, has been controversial to hog producers, who generally haven’t understood its point.
But Rodibaugh said surveys show that young women like the campaign, which is ironic, in-your-face, and attempts to dispel pork’s dull image.
“We’ve seen some real exciting preliminary results from our six target markets of the ‘don’t be blah’ campaign, and we feel that will continue to attract the attention of the female buyer in the target market,” said Rodibaugh.
Buying the brand from the NPPC was important, she said, because the pork board didn’t want to invest any more money into a phrase it didn’t control.
