From in-store ads to pork recipes, see how the Pork Checkoff is getting consumers to add more pork to their meals and their shopping carts.

Neal Hull joined the National Pork Board (NPB) in 2019 as director of domestic market development. He leads the field team of channel market development managers to align NPB’s strategies with key retail and foodservice customers across the country; he is focused on building trust, adding value and creating demand for U.S. pork. Neal has more than 30 years of experience in the food industry, including foodservice and retail.

Neal grew up on a small farm near Moravia, Iowa, where his family raised pigs and other livestock. He graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing and minored in speech communication.

Neal and his wife, Sara, have three children and reside in Austin, Minnesota.

All Hands on Deck

We’ve been talking about it for months now: the new Taste What Pork Can Do^TM consumer campaign from the National Pork Board (NPB). Launched in May, the new effort is the biggest consumer outreach campaign NPB has produced in 25 years.

Unlike any other NPB consumer campaign, we’re using research-backed, digital-forward tactics to drive demand here at home. A long-term play to boost demand, the Taste What Pork Can Do^TM effort prioritizes the eating behaviors of new audiences and puts pork front and center as a convenient, nutritious, tasty and flavorful protein.

The goal — and challenge — is reaching younger consumers, including Millennials and Gen Zers, by using data to deliver actual, positive results.

Power in Partners

To help us achieve our goal — and meet that challenge — we’re working with stakeholders throughout the value chain to make sure we’re pulling the right levers. A key to ensuring the success of this new consumer outreach campaign is our retail partners across the country.

NPB has connected with retailers regularly for many years and in many ways, including through our Retail Advisory Committee (RAC). The committee meetings offer a direct, industry-specific tool for connecting retail community leaders with important pre-competitive information about pork and NPB’s marketing efforts while allowing NPB to learn from retailers about what is and isn’t working on the ground.

At this year’s spring meeting, NPB shared more about the new consumer campaign. We shared with retailers the new tagline, and, through a culinary exercise, showed retail attendees the versatility of pork and its role as an ingredient, a key element to selling more pork to Millennial and Gen Z shoppers.

Boots on the Ground

Retailers play a critical role in the supply chain, which is why NPB’s approach to market growth — including the new campaign — was built with retailers in mind.

RAC Chair, Tony Manker, is the senior director of Meat & Seafood for Schnuck Markets and has worked with NPB to gather feedback from retailers on the new campaign.

According to Tony, “Now is a pivotal time where the younger generations are looking for those new ideas and new flavors and new ways to prepare things. A lot of what I do is just getting our retailers into a room and saying, ‘All right, how can we all, collectively, educate our consumers to buy more pork?’ Because we know how delicious, versatile and affordable it is. We need to get that across to our consumers.”

With that in mind, NPB built the new campaign, in part, to help support retailers’ existing activities. Schnucks, with stores located in the Midwest, is one of the first retail partners to be in the market with the new consumer campaign and often provides customers with recipe ideas as an added value to their product offerings. To build on the Taste What Pork Can Do^TM campaign, Schnucks began including the new brand in their summer marketing efforts, highlighting pork cuts and offering customers recipes so they can confidently cook what they purchase.

At the Starting Line

With stores like Schnucks rolling out pieces of the new campaign nationwide, NPB is collecting data to determine if it’s working as designed. It’s the starting line of a long-term campaign where NPB will continue to support retailers at the store level, so people who see our ads can go to the store and connect the ads with pork products.

What’s more, the new approach to consumer marketing will continue to build on the pork industry’s strengths, including flavor and consumers’ existing affinity for our products. And, it doubles down on our long-standing commitment to our retail partners while providing an opportunity to deliver a positive message that connects on an emotional level.

Working on the retail side, on behalf of the nation’s pork producers, I’m so excited to see how our retailers are helping consumers learn more about the Taste What Pork Can Do^TM campaign. To learn more about how the Pork Checkoff is building a bigger appetite for pork — and to see the campaign for yourself — visit porkcheckoff.org/2025.