How Pork Cultivates Culture to Reach a Bigger Audience
Culture is a major focus in the Pork Checkoff’s most recently introduced strategic campaigns to reach and encourage consumption among Hispanic and African American consumers.
“If you look at the changing demographics in the U.S., one-third of the population is Hispanic, African American and Asian, and it tends to skew younger. As we look at the Millennials and Gen Z in particular, they're the most multicultural generations in U.S. history,” explains Bill Even, CEO of the National Pork Board.
The Pork Checkoff has developed an intentional plan to speak directly to this group and engage in conversation about the nutrition, health, compatibility, flavor and cultural ties pork offers. By and large, the targeted age group is between 18 to 45. This reaches the GenZennials born from 1992 to 2000, a mixture of Gen Z and Millennials, and the end of the Gen Xers.
How Will Pork Campaigns Influence Culture?
The younger demographic wants to stay in touch with their culture, says Jose De Jesus, senior director of multicultural marketing at the National Pork Board.
“They don't want to lose that connection to mom and dad and grandma and grandpa,” he says. “We know that so a lot of the content that we do is rooted in culture. When we do our planning, there's got to be cultural nuances that bring it home to the consumer.”
This could include a word that is culturally meaningful. Or it could be incorporating “Spanglish” – a little Spanish and English combined – because that is how the Hispanic audience speaks when they are talking at home, De Jesus explains.
“We always have something that hits a nerve from a cultural perspective, because it's important,” he says.
Reach the Audience Where It Is
Showing up in platforms that are relevant for this consumer audience is important.
“Take Tik Tok for example. Pork is striving for a big presence in this social media platform because that's where GenZennials live,” De Jesus says. “Instagram has become very popular, particularly among Millennials. We do have a presence on Facebook and make sure we're not abandoning it. But it’s our third platform behind Tik Tok and Instagram.”
The Pork Checkoff continues to adjust to make sure it reaches people where they engage the most.
“Tik Tok has been really good. We have videos that have upwards of 1 million views that we just launched maybe a month ago,” he adds.
Tik Tok allows more conversation between people, too.
“You get a chance to educate the consumer in a more organic way, which is what the social space should be – a conversation,” De Jesus says. “It’s not about preaching to the consumer.”
Multicultural Consumer Trends
One of the biggest trends De Jesus is seeing is around equipment. Pork Checkoff research shows that air fryers have become immensely popular.
Air fryers are easy and more nutritious than conventional frying, he points out.
“Both African American and Hispanic consumers tend to do a lot of frying,” De Jesus says. “A lot of the content we're working on with our content creators involves what I call ‘gadgets,’ that can cook pork in minimal time in an air fryer. And it's really good for you.”
Flavor is king, he says. These two groups of consumers often add more than salt and pepper in their cooking.
“It's about adobo. It's about chile. It's about all these flavors that they may have seen their parents or grandparents use,” De Jesus says. “This flavor profile is still in play, so we work with chefs to come up with new ideas and recipes that uses flavors that are culturally relevant within these communities.”
A New Approach for a New Audience
Unlike campaigns of the past, Even says these campaigns are designed to reach a very targeted, specific audience.
“If you start seeing ads in Spanish, we're not doing it right,” De Jesus explains. “We have a very precise approach to be able to reach consumer where they are at and in the way that they want to be reached with the messaging we know resonates.”
Pork Checkoff has moved on from traditional marketing of years ago because it wants to reach a different target. Research shows Boomers eat a lot of pork, but he says they also know that the younger generation will have to carry the load of pork purchasing moving forward.
“We want producers to know that their Checkoff dollars are being deployed in a culturally relevant way with the future consumers of the U.S.,” Even says. “This work is being done in markets where pork producers may not see it like they saw the “Pork the Other White Meat” TV ads from 30 years ago.”
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