Pork Quality, Market Growth, and Innovation w/ David Newman
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Yeah, I try. I don't qualify that how .

you do if you just know how to type on the keyboard. I fine. I know, I know. I catch you fine motor skills, I don't know.

That might be a Better that might be a Better way to get your deal rather than typing the code some. And you'd be surprised how many people can't type in a code. I bet you to get IT wrong. I bet then they get passed. Yeah, I understand.

Then you got to help. Well, the world needs help.

No patch on.

No, you know, that's the thing is we talk about this. Uh, we don't have patron on. We have something Better.

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Yeah, because my good looks are only going to get us so far. So that's, I mean, that's part of the reason. So I started farmer greates like I don't know when I have to do something to fill in the fill in the whole .

here so you're Better to listen .

to I think I do have a face for radio. Absolutely write about that. That's all. We ve got a great guest ah today as you know, whether you're in the business or not, you've heard me rain along about IT the hug business.

Hog business has been a pretty tough road to ho for the last few years and there's a little life at the end of the tunnel, little light at the end of the tunnel. But uh, it's it's tough. And uh today we have uh, a guy that is on the forefront of doing everything he can and everything that the national poor producers can do to help build the markets and help give some of these producers a little relief. He is the senior vice president for market growth at the national pork board, and we're going to talk to him about the check koff most recent work to build a bigger appetite for port. So without any further, do let's get into that.

Dave newman.

welcome to born talk. yeah.

Thank you god to be here. So for there's people that obviously aren't involved with port production or don't know their way around national pork board. So why did you give us a little bit of background about what you do? And also what what's the what's the purpose of pork chek often and how you guys Operate?

wow. Okay, here we go. So in my role in national pork board, senior vice president of market growth, what does that mean? That means that anything relating to the promotion of pork in the us or globally in the role that we play, well, come back to that just a minute.

Um is part of what I oversee. So I oversee the domestic marketing team so that the promotional activities think about iconic brands that you're familiar with, the other White meat that would have been managed through the staff that I work with everyday international marketing. So once we get access into a market, that's what our sister organization in ppc, the national protections council, that's what they do.

Once we get access into a market, then we help facilitate bringing people into the market, right? So driving volume and value and sales. So I also oversee our human nutrition team and our data and insights at the front work.

So it's it's it's a very broad category under that umbrella. And I said I would come back to the role we play. So it's an antarctic story in the in the pig business as to how national portable y came to be.

I'm going to say i'm going to start in one thousand nine hundred and eighty five. But don't worry, this goes really fast. So back up one thousand hundred and eighty five or in the early one thousand nine hundred and eighty, certainly we know there was farm crisis, right? We still had a massive number of independent port producers.

And the producers came together and they rally together to say, how could we build a concerted effort around port promotion? You know, the business was different than IT is today. And though there are still thousands of independent producers, especially here in iwa, right here in this area as well.

So how can we come together in some unified front and create a way that we can do promotion of product, we can do research on behalf of producers, things to make us Better, right? And how can we advocate on behalf of producers? And fast forward through A A long series of events? And the cheque was born.

And when the cheque was born in one thousand nine hundred and eighty five, IT was actually under the perfume, the national port producers council, and the goal there, what was called the act in order, because the checkoff system literally runs under congressional oversight. So, and by the way, there are more than thirteen checkoff systems in the united states. So there is corn, there is beef, there is soy, there is pork.

There's even a check off for the concrete block association. So there's checks for everything. So we are essentially there is A A levy from every pig soul that goes into a this is go to checking account since we're saying check off and that assessment that is taken from every animal that is raised in the united states is put into the port check off.

And we manage those dollars very specifically for only three things, research, education and promotion. So research, could we look at how incredibly efficient we have become in the last thirty or forty years? I mean, it's it's amazing, right? Everything from ventilation to feed gain ratio to farm design little side me look at litter size right? I picked her her years is is still going up.

Um all of those things we helps contribute towards will be at animal science or animal health, right? So how do we prevent african swine fever becoming the united states? Or how do we think about endemic disease? Like what is research we can do to Better understand that and possibly eliminated or regional? Zed, there's a million avenues there.

So that's research education. The most classic example is por quality assurance plus. So right, every packer in the united states requires you to be PK a plus certified because that gives confidence to our consumers, both domestically and internationally, that we have a robust set of standards that are around the practical guide to raising pigs, vaccinating pigs, a sorting pigs, loading pigs, transporting them.

That's the diction component. And then promotion, which is the area that I oversee, national pt board. And that is, how do we help drive value, value of the only thing we produce in the pork business, right, which is meat, and how do we drive those sales domestically and internationally.

So I mentioned that IT started as the national poor producers council in two thousand. One, the national poor producers council was separated. This was, this was a guidance by congress, and actually broke the industry into two organizations.

And that is where the national property council was born that does advocacy work and policy work. And national pork board was then created to branch off into research, education and promotion. And and the reason that happened was, was there were some concern outside of the industry that the lobbying side and the promotion side were too closely tied together and they wanted to see a very clear divide. And so the divide happens since two thousand one. And and here we are.

What's a it's a good time to talk about promotion because anybody, whether you're in the hog business or whether you're a listener to barn talk, you've heard me rant for praca since this thing started. It's been a rough road to hope for poor producers and well, pretty much poor producers all over the world. Really, the market has been pretty tough for last couple years.

It's a good thing that we're all as resilient as we are because those people that went through the eighties and went through the nineties, we we know a few things about tough times, but what what is pork board doing today to try to try to lift that ship? Because I know that that's a popular topic on people's minds, is how we get out of this mess. To say is a .

popular topic would be an understatement. So i've been in the poor board about a year and a half. So just back up here and half and look at where we were interesting time to come in and start talking about promotion.

But the world on the street is demand, demand, demand, right? And what are we doing about this? So I grew up in this business.

I grew up in the hog business. My family, third generation in this business, that's all my parents did for living my entire life. They were hog farmers.

So I remember stories about one thousand nine hundred and eighty, you know. And my dad used to tell me they are the best loan at the bank at two point five percent interest. And inner I was born and poke a honey.

I in this when my parents far for for twenty years. So so just to say that. I'm a huge fan for promotion. Let's say that that's that's my shameless plug and everybody that knows me knows that that's there.

Whenever I was given the opportunity to come to the organization and helped lead the team, IT was IT was necessary that we focus on demand. IT was an absolute that we focused on demand and that we really return in a big, big way to focusing in on demand. And i've said this a million times, but IT is the truest statement in our business.

The entire pork business in IT exists for under one thing only, and that is that a consumer walks into a real grocery store or a food service establishment. They buy pork and they eat IT, and they like IT enough to repeat the process tomorrow or the next day. And if that doesn't happen, whether you are selling grain bins, hog slats or feed trucks, you won't exist.

So that consumer peace is so critically important that we understand. And in the last couple years, I really taught us some very important lessons. And this is where we're really going to get. We're going to get global here in this conversation to get out there. For thirty years, this business has rode the export wave.

And and if you didn't know what else to say, just say china because they were going to suck up that extra volume, right? And there was a Price at which we could always move IT. But if you fast forward to where we are today, we know the geopolitics are changing rapidly on a daily basis, and pork s snacked dab in the middle of as being one of the leading proteins in the world.

So simply put, we have to focus on domestic consumption. We have to focus on making pork release to americans today. And we while we need to celebrate and continue to push hard on exports domestically, this is crucial because to scale IT as one example, we exported about eight billion pounds of product a year. We consume twenty one billion in country.

Do feel like like our domestic market. And I know you'll get into this. Some of this is obviously generational, but for a long time I feel like producers and were producers. But, you know, I I grew up ferry to finish, we feroe right here on this farm.

But there was always this assumption, I guess, my round about way of saying, we just assume that this market was always onna be here and we didn't really need to do much about. It's like you can have your stake, but the pig is going to own breakfast forever and people are going to eat poor chops because you're not going to buy stake all the time and it's a good deal. And let's face IT, you can only eat so much chicken. I mean, I feel like that was our assumption, but we're finding out that as as generations change and as as the generation that we depended on gets older, it's not the same market.

IT was no, no, it's not. And the reality to really narrow down, what you just said is there are certainly people who thought for years that pork, just stuff just sells yourself. We can clear a half a billion pounds a week, and everybody, no one's gone to stop eating bad, right? And no one's going to stop eating sausage and ham and other stuff.

But the reality is, while port is loved by literally billions of people, IT doesn't sell itself, right? And if you want to be proactive and you want to be progressive to make something relevant with, you have to market IT. And that's not just pork.

It's anything. It's the car you drive, it's the drink you drink, it's the shoes you wear, it's the cloth you wear. I mean, look, there's marketing everywhere. If you don't believe me to just pick up your phone, start domes growing because you are getting hit by every company in the world right now on the things you like.

So if you don't APP promotion and and listen, I growing up in a family of farmers, I think there's a thing about marketing always feels a little fluffy, you know, when they say today, crunchy, right? Yes, it's like it's the feel good, almost corny sometimes side of the business. But the reality is you've got to make a product that consumers want to consume, and then you've to remind them why they want to consume IT.

And the world cannot just revolve around bacon. You, I mean, bacon is the best thing that ever happened to the port. Thank god for IT but but there's .

only sixteen pounds in a pig. If we could just breathe that pig with one hundred pounds of we talk about that all the time, man would be nice to have a hundred pound of bacon out .

of a pig but wouldn't yeah for years if you could have bread the ham off of that, that would too. That's just not the way IT works. So we have to think about this in A A nearly whole hog approach, right?

You want, you've got to think about ribs. You've got ta think about shoulder, you're got to think about hands, you ve got to think about balls. Definitely need to think about loans and how we move that entire animal and remind consumers of all the awesome dishes and colony experiences they can have beyond just Christmas or easter.

right? Special occasion types. Step, you got ta go from special occasion to every day. And that is that is the goal is to move this from special occasion to everyday occasion. And and is possible because bork is incredibly relevant.

It's incredibly relevant with the with the future population of the united states being right. If we think about a more multicultural audience and you bring that global flare of port being so popular ever else in the world, we have a heck of an opportunity to get that done. But it's not going to happen all by itself.

And if you really sun this back up to any, your first question is, simply put, I go. That's why the pork board exists. We have individual packagers and processors who do their own marketing, and we work hand in hand with those people every single day.

So the thing about the pork board is we are a competitor to no one. We are out here to help you whether you've got fifty sales or fifty thousand souls. And we love the fact that there are other competitors in the market.

But if we can be catalyst to helping each one of those brands, hey, let us help you Better understand your bacon business. Hey, let us help you Better understand where your opportunities live with ground pork, right? Doing that goes back to that theory of a rising tide lift all boats. And that's really why we exist and how we want to exist. On behalf of the sixty thousand poor producers we represent, yeah, I think .

barbecue cultures been a trend that just keeps going up and up. And that's a really you talk about giant consumers pork every day. I just feel like more more when you get on tiktok or get on social media, barbecue is really ramping up and people use that.

A lot of pork about you. That's been really, really great. You touched on consumer and how important is that? We're in touch with the consumer, and you guys are constantly doing research on what the consumer wants. What have you guys found that might be an interesting metric of research that you find have found a with the consumer?

sure. Well, so you know after all this marketing speak that I was saying earlier, you know we're got to go after them if you're going to a do IT in a targeted and efficient and responsible way because these are your dollars, these other producers dollars in our hands. So we want to make sure we're doing that the right way.

You really got to know who the consumer is. And again, any good brand does a lot of consumer research. So we just wrapped up earlier this year a consumer segmentation project we call IT consumer connect.

But essentially, we spent a year and a half deep diving in one of the most robust consumer research processes that any checkoff has ever done. And IT, really, the goal was let's take an incredible deep dive on understanding who the future consumer of pork is. And i've listened to some of your recent podcast and you has talked about the baby bother generation, right, and how they that influences different things in our society.

Well, the baby bum generation has Carried the pork business for the last thirty years, but as they literally exit the market, you or if nothing else, start to become older, an age out of the market, they're eating significantly less. We cannot rely on the boomer generation to Carry us forward through another downturn cycle so that consumers segmentation, we did IT breaks consumers into seven very tinct segments. And again, this is something that any brand would do to know how they can focus their marketing efforts.

So IT breaks into that's what this um you can see the same, but we have this consumer connect book. It's hundred and fifty five pages. You'll never get back in your life.

okay. So when you read IT, IT really tells you a deep dive on understanding the seven segments. And i'll give me a couple example.

So i'll give you a my segment. My segment is is called the colony adventure. So right, we have a huge far of the population.

A lot of these barbecue e guys would fall into that who are very confident with me. They're very confident with pork, but they're also really confident in taking on complicated recipes, right? So they're not afraid to bile the stuff.

I'm going to give you an example to me by all the stuff a to make L P store and actually go out and find this a show day paste, you have to have to really do l pestle, authentically mexican. So the ordinary venture is willing to do that. They'll take on a global flare or a colony perspective.

And one of the other segments is just called the confident mediator. And that's everybody you know that has three smokers on their back deck. They're not afraid to take on a pork shoulder rose.

They are not afraid to smoke a belly. Those people are twenty percent of the population and nearly twenty percent of the consumption of pork. So this tells us where to focus and why to focus on them and what to focus on.

But IT also told us where we don't want to focus. And I go to one of the bottom groups. So there's a group called the meat minimizes, if you're in the pork business, is not a real responsible use of allocating dollars to focus on a segnor of population who is against eating meat or who is looking for meat alternatives. So IT tells us where to be, where we can be more strategic with the money and more strategic with the actual marketing execution into each one of the seven stagnant.

That's one hundred percent right. I mean, there is no use of spend in time where you're not going to get anywhere, and there is just a certain percentage of the population that you don't need to worry about. Um talk a little bit about some of that demographics, but. Also some of that is uh ethnicity because we're very one great thing for the for the pork industry is the and I don't know what the number is, but my assumption is that a large percentage of immigration to the united states is his spanning and hesper ics love port and that's that's a good thing.

Yeah it's a fact. How do you reach those people? Yeah that's that's a great question. So for the last five years especially, we have put a huge emphasis on multi cultural marketing. So um actually one of my colleagues who is a day he is who um is our VP of consumer marketing and he we're we're going to talk about our new campaign here in a little bit, but whose I came into his role at the national portable ard to run multicultural marketing. And so we have two very distinct platforms that home in on your question and your comment about how critically important that, that population demographic is.

So we have an entire portion of folks at the pork board who worked very specifically on the high spending market and the return on investment there is wild is wild in our check off dollars for twenty twenty four, where we're at to now, our return on investment is more than twenty five to one on marketing dollars. So this again is and i'll say this later, but it's about you gotta learn to fish where the fish are, right? And we know that eighty percent of the population growth for the last twenty years in this countries, in multi cultural, and ninety percent of the girl's moving forward, is going to be multicultural.

The boca, that which is his panic, and the his spanning consumer, the united states has trillions of dollars of spending power, trillions, not billions, trillions of dollars. And port is incredibly culturally relevant to them. And we know that if we can not giving example of one of the recent his panic marketing platforms that we ran here this this past year, knowing that pig farmers are struggling, knowing that we've had a hard time, it's like, guys, we've got we've got a really allocate dollars where IT matters with our award.

And we did some really specific multi cultural targeted marketing and high population areas of multi culture. So think about really focusing on consumer, the heisman ic consumers and houston who shop at, you know, a retailer like A G B. Let's think about markets like miami.

Let's think about markets like L A, southern california where you have larger population of espana. And let's focus on them to what they're looking for. So we have a platform, this called pony port, which literally translates into ad.

And the return on investment there has been wild, and we know that, that growth is really important. The other key market is the african american audience. We have A A separate platform there that's called soulful port, and our return on investment there is big right now.

And here's what's interesting as each one of those audiences, they're concerned about different things. African audiences concerned about nutrition, concerned about about the role port plays in nutrition. So we need to make sure we're targeting them at the right messages.

And then if you look at the heisman ic audience, they are just thinking about differently, thinking about poor cast, an ingredient. You know, carneta aren't necessarily center or the plate. They're an ingredient as part of a dish. And so we've got ta think about this beyond just the way i'm assuming we grew up okay, bone in poor top middle, the plate match potatoes on one side, Green beans on the other right? That is not the future of how we deliver for things change yeah and something .

else that you were talking about that that definitely has change when you think about your messaging. Like I grew up, most companies had a blanket whatever industry you're in had a blanket advertising scheme. They said the same thing all the time to everybody and that doesn't work today. And that's that's obviously why you're tail in your message. But I guess the other thing would be if you're poor producer and you don't see those poor ads, that means that you guys are doing your job yeah because you're not preach into the quire or not spending money to tell people like us that we should eat more port because we're already .

eating IT yeah you know it's hard, right? Because our stakeholders, our most important audience, you know, to address that question of what is the check off doing for me. And I said this at a talk over the summer and was talking to a good friend of my bill, telling her from northwest style used to be on our board.

And I said, bill of you hear my voice or our voice in the combine this fall. We may not be doing our debt because I don't need to go to world port kex boo and pass out pork jobs until people to eat more pork. I to be at a more relevant conference that where there's a ton of genesis and millennial right in people who are less familiar their product to remind them why it's delicious, why it's nutritious and why they should eat more of IT in their day to day, right every day occasion.

And so don't give me wrong. We are still pushing our message of making sure our farmers know because they need to rally cry. And the last twenty four months of that, I mean, you know.

Being a farmer myself, I say, like nothing teaches you a lesson like losing that much money, right? So at some point you need a little bit of a rally cry. And what we're doing is not to say what we're doing this to make you feel good is saying we're doing this because all of this research we collected points to one direction.

We've got to focus very laser being, focus on who the future consumer is a pork, and we've got to advertise. And that does mean creating a new brand. And IT means creating a new brand tag line, even something that we is brought enough that you can get behind IT.

Whether you are focusing on and take ultra audience, whether you are trying to work with a retailer, whether you're trying to work with a large food service distributor or whether you're just trying to digitally target that consumer on their phone. And so that's what we have been working really hard on this year. And we're planning to launch launch a new brand campaign in early twenty twenty five.

Yeah, digital marking for us is like a lot of what we do. And it's really, really where here is a reason where here and so what are some ways that you guys are using a digital marketing to reach that consumer?

Well, so um this is the the question I get from your everyday pig farm in amErica is yeah newman, that's great. Love the story. Great great line.

But what's different, we've had the other White me, we've had been inspired, you know we've had these campaigns which by the way, they did work. Marketing works sometimes even bad marketing works, right? If you're in the marketplace, saying anything is Better than saying nothing.

So they say, yeah, we understand you got all this, but what's different this time? Two thousand and five is is so much incredibly different than one hundred and ninety five when I was a teenager. That IT blows my mind, right? I don't have a cell phone. I don't have a cell phone til I went to college, and I definitely didn't have facebook, which is funny because you now they say facebooks only for all people but yeah but and I guess that classifies me because I still have IT. But the thing about this is with the point i'm getting to is as back in in the day, this isn't disparaging any marketing campaigns i've ever done, but there was a time where you had to advertise in that magazine that's on your coffee table here, which was plenty. And what year?

That's Price? Seventy seven. Yeah.

there ago, one hundred and seventy seven, you had to put up a bill board to tell people about what you did. You add advertising your local feed store or in your you know series and robot or wherever and that that is just radical different today. If you're going to take a more laser being approached to marketing, you're Better to be doing digital marketing.

So ninety nine percent of this campaign is digitally focused. And here's what's I mean, it's it's so cool that it's almost scary, right, what the world knows about you digitally. But when I mentioned those seven segments and I say, listen, we're gna develop a creative concept, let's just to go to your grilling example and say, i'm going to create this really great creative.

That is a video of a family barbecuing out on the deck, right? They're celebrating this moment as a family, and they're cooking rives and meaning pork belly. They're obviously all very happy.

And here comes in tagline, right? I mean, it's it's it's emotional IT hits on the attribute of flavor. Those type of things.

If you package that, you're not going to send that to one of the segments like out. There's another one that's called mindful choice maker and this this is a segment of the population which is actually quite large. But there the um there the mom, he's really concerned about what they're feeding their family. They're still a huge consumer of pork. But that message may not resonate with them.

Who does that resonate with the confident media? right? right? The coinage adventure is like, yeah, actually I do need to go buy some ribs and call some buddies and and the weather still nice out this fall and actually saturday, we need to have a shindy g you know, up in the barn and cooks a meat. And that's really about how this digital peace works. You can go into platforms, whether it's tiktok, whether it's instagram, whether it's facebook, you can literally filter down to the confident mediator, you can filter down to the mindful choice's ker, and you can also filter down to the geographic area, which is really, really important in port to make sure that you are fishing where the fish are. Because eighty percent the consumption and eighty percent of the population of pork is in the states.

whether or no pigs, yeah, in that crazy.

it's the coast that's good .

though other percent that's good.

Do you feel like so far just a producer side, we've noted genetics are kind of starting to change to be a more fatter juicier cut of pork with for a long time, we are trying to be lean, lean, lean. Now it's kind of go on the other way. And I think people just from the producer side, that kind of seems like this because we're on the ground four of IT that the the the genetics are changing based on the consumer wanting, wanting taste your port may be a little fatter, port marbled. Is that something you guys you guys are seen on your and two.

yeah so um now in to profit on my my background a little bit and say by training i'm a meat scientist. I was farmer but I did A P H, D M meat science. I spent twenty years publish shing research on port quality. So i'm a huge fan of poor quality for this guy.

He's a bird guy so yeah yeah you what tell i'm in .

every breed guy because here's here's the into the day um it's not just about premium, right? Like like berk that's i'm going up that's gonna fit the mold of the entire country. Um what we've done, sorry to your question, is we've made pork incredibly more consistent.

You back up ten years ago, import quality was incredibly inconsistent. And when I say inconsistent, i'm talking about color. I'm talking about marvelling, right, the way that we sort some loans for export, like the japanese export, those type things.

So here's what I would say. We're getting more consistent. I've published a tony research on that. When you look at just this this quality standards piece, it's important to recognize, I get your question all the time about poor quality.

And at some point I usually make the joke, well, fatigues flavor, yeah, which is, which is true to the core. IT is true, right? The flavor of any protein is driven by fat.

One thing that i've point IT out is is I get this question quite frequently is like I knew and I understand you guys are doing this consumer marketing, but um are we should we be worried about quality first? Should we be worried about quality of product first? And my answer is no because if you can make work more relevant with consumer and we have a lot of great cuts, by the way, there's no belly problem, right? There's no shoulder problem.

Um you take a picnic or or a bot or you take anything else is no problem. When we think about quality, listen, everybody kind of gets driven to the loan, right, which frustrates me that it's been it's been the loser on the cut out for forty years, right? But it's really hard to tell producers losing money that they need to invest in genetics for quality.

Yes, let's get right to the chase. And when you start creating a market that is on the upside and you're making money, you will invest in making your product Better. So do I think we need to constantly think about that? Yes, absolutely.

We need to be thinking about product quality. And if you only make one thing, don't you want to make a good, you know? So I think that that's I think you're actually starting to see that flesh itself out with individual companies.

sure. There are people out there who are putting a focus on certain genetics in certain feeding strategies, right? Um so and the truth is there's just a lot of danger pork out here in the marketplace today. Can I be Better? I'm sure that could be questioned a thousand different ways, but i've had some great eating experiences in the poor business, and i've had some really bad and experiences too.

So we're still we still got to train people how to cook IT, right, right? But more than anything, we've got to bring that relevance back to the consumer and remind them of why they love to eat port because more than any other protein, pork is the most diverse. It's the most relevant from a colony perspective.

Just talk to a chef more than any other protein. There's so many more dishes. There's so many different flavor experiences you can have. We just got to help remind people of that.

Yeah and I think a great example of the cooking side of IT is for anybody that has ever helped with one of the county poor producers cook at state fair, I love doing that because it's so interesting. You get people that they want the recipe of how you cook those pork loin, those those sandwiches or the pork chop on a stick because all IT is is it's cooked right you know it's use the .

meat thermometer .

w it's cut right? Big difference. But they think it's the best thing, it's the best peace support that they've had if it's somebody that is not your your everyday mediator. They eat that that it's like it's so good.

What's because we cook IT, right? I mean, it's not because there's some fancy recipe that we marinated all this pork in and that we we are we based IT as they were going to know we have this giant hit cooker and we're cooking thousand these things, but they're cooked right here and they turned out perfect people level yeah but to back up a little bit when you were talking about, you know, fat equals flavor, that's that's a message. So that mom, that's really interested in nutrition, that's not the message to give her because a lot of those people's ideas, they want that lean.

But then also the other side of IT is they wanted to taste good. So somehow you have to market to them that they actually they need a little bit of that fat in there. But you you got to find a creative way to tell him that because you can just say how you need more. Fact is that equals flavor because the flag goes up. I am not given my family fat so it's it's a and then the barbecue .

guys are like, ah let's out the fat cap on there what's .

I want the top with the thickest. Marketing and the the social media side of our society is so interesting today. And what can just go off at the example I will give is have you heard about how how much a free publicity apple bees got to?

Oh yes, chili. There was A A woman not paid by Charles. No, had no nothing to do with IT, but he went to a chilies. And what was IT SHE really cheese .

triple deep appetizer?

SHE had that and loved IT, and that video excluded. And chilis got like, I can't remember what they they think they're .

like thirty percent this year. Just be just from that. Just one video that one person made change the entire market for for that restaurant a and it's like that the power of social media, one pork dish can change like that. That's the right person. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you look at the organic nature of that, and that is wide. Look at whose some of the biggest influences are on youtube. They say one thing, yeah, they get a one video, right? And they can drive an entire category.

I listened to your podcast last week, so let me just say this. I think you could understand that there is incredible power behind earned media. That's media you didn't pay for versus paid media.

And that is a great example of you want to build something organic, right, and can get people the champion behind IT. And what is what is there to celebrate more than bacon? Yeah, I mean, bacon is actually a great example of that. There is a huge segment of the population that doesn't even know back in as pork yeah.

it's it's, it's its own identity.

It's its own baby, right and it's amazing and not only is literally amazing oh remember phanes flavor yeah by the way. Um so why is IT good because IT tastes good yeah right. And so I think it's interesting to know when you when you go into this new we're going after something big in twenty five and and really, really launching a brand for the pork industry.

I didn't say for the national por port, I said for the pork industry, we're the vehicle for you, right? And we're working really closely with all the major packer processors, with all the retailers. This is not done in a silo.

It's not done in a vacuum over. And clive, this this is us working really closely with the entire industry to say, how can we be a catalyst in an ally to lift the category. And believe me, we have support.

And there are some things when I talk about this individual marketing, which we are going to do by segment. But something is really important for went understand is there's some universal truths that apply to every category. And our data, our research, say there are three universal truth, non negotiable.

Les, if you will. One, whatever you do, you have to focus on taste and flavor. You have to IT is the number one most relevant thing across every category of consumer.

So whether you're a confidence mediator, you a simple feeder or your a ordinary venture, flavor drives everything. And I think that should makes sense. There's a reason you eat which you eat, drink which you drink ripe.

So flavor, pork flavors very important. Second is baLance, and that leads on this human nutrition piece. So we have a team of researchers that works specifically with rds registered detis ans. They work with physicians, assistance and physicians, which is the hardest st group to get to right to talk about the role of red meat, the diet.

But we have a whole team of people who are focused on nutrition and working to do research that can be applied to things like dietary guidelines or right? So you have a flavor, b nutrition or baLance how you want to look at that. And then three convenience. It's gotta be convenient. And if you're not playing and snacking, if you're not playing in smaller package size and putting stuff into the hands gensec and millennial, they are the future.

Yes, they want to grab and go.

You don't have a choice. There's a consumer. So this new camping is going to be focused on them around those three on negotiable les, but convenience is king today. And you know, if you look at home meal replacement ment, look at smaller package size.

You know, I tell everyone, if you don't believe me, think about the gas station that you went into one thousand hundred and ninety five, and look at the gas station convenience store that you go into a twenty twenty four. They are radially different, and there's a lot of convenient items. And there they have got protein.

Yes, I do the nineteen, I do the ninety second rice, a lot of days, you know, put in the microwave to do, do ninety seconds. That's what I, that's what I want. I usually spend the most time on the protein and then my sides. When i'm busy, I just .

want a quick and I, yes, well.

some meet you talk about with convenience. I was like, everybody talks about beef sticks, and I feel like pork sticks that doesn't really get talked about enough. But I love we love pork sticks.

There's a lot of people love pork sticks and that's up than that. I just don't know why pork six haven't really taken off because you talk about that convenience part. It's got nutritional value.

It's good and it's convenient. I just I don't know how we push porched CS more, but i've loved to figure out a way to do so. Jack, yes.

could you make my heads small enough to wrap around a pork stick?

I could market that. You wanna know why? Because I mean, there's a ton of a very relevant pork items or way that maybe I should say there's a ton of very innovative pork items.

I mean, there's some brands out here that make some awesome poor items, right? But it's about relevance. You mean in that thing about relevance when people think about jerky? Here's my test.

What do they say beef there ago?

And you can say the thing about other proteins two. And are you being marketed that? Yes, remember when rainy savage used to be the first right? I think about that's marketing.

Yes, that's how to work. You've got to remind people to buy your product and tell me why it's awesome and taste good, why it's good for them and why it's convenient. You can grab and go with that. I mean, it's a kind of that example of how things move going forward.

something that I just like kind of a hit me. We are sitting here talking about this is this change in the consumers and your generation is is so like that is one hundred percent spot on because you know you grew up mean we do the same thing.

We're kind of joined at the hip but like IT always just IT drives me crazy like yesterday we were going to go pull pigs up at at his site and at two thirty or three o'clock you call and you're like, i'm just leave in the warehouse. I'm going to stop at home and get something to eat. I have an eat yet today i've got to grab something and then i'll go up there and i'm like, i'm a three meal.

I'm actually like a four meal a day if you count the stacking and I mean, it's he hill call and be like want to do something. You want to shoot that at noon. You want to do this at no, no, you don't do that at noon or eating lunch at noon.

But to that generation, they're schedule they don't think of of like meal time doesn't mean to them and he's not even a generation removed. I mean, he grew up in a house where that's what we did. But the way he lives his life and the way is the once lives her life together, meal time is kind of like an after thought.

They need to get there. You like you're always like I got to get my, I got to get my my protein or whatever that might be at ten o'clock in the morning. I might be a ten o'clock at night.

And it's just I don't know if i'm I don't know if i'm if I am like the example of what a lot of people might do, but convenient times, everything we realized at times, everything or health, everything. And sometimes I eat food for fuel, not just flavor all the time. I mean, I love dinner. Don't get that's what I probably would do the most experimenting but when you just going about your day, yeah you got to get stuff done and it's it's ground beef, ground pork, pork with ninety secret rice and an apple and banana yeah so we have .

we got to hold the phone for a second here and say, I wanted to think about what he just said. I think about food is fuel. I've gotten get my protein and tour. You never said that in your life you'd never, I day, dream about .

what tries and I got to have for supper.

I'm like, I don't get me wrong. What i'm a foot. Did you learn that .

social media, you learned IT by listening to just all the people we listen to. Health is wealth. And if you want to, you know, I mean, i'm active in the gym, right?

I want to build muscle. I want to. So you know, eating delly meat for lunch every day doesn't fit my goals. And you know, IT doesn't always might make me feel a little more lethargic. So I don't know. I optimize for sometimes feel over food and enjoy the food so much like when I go to mom and dad it's yeah dad just smoke to biscuit and i'm definitely on a partake in that but i'm not doing that all the time.

So you know I so in in this so this is fascinating. I mean, you couldn't say Better for me if I tried to think about an example of why jensie millennial this focus has to happen um to think about this. So it's part of this segmentation.

We have something that's a typing tool and then how this works, right? Tens of thousands of people have taken this typing tool. You answer a handful of very simple questions and it's IT gets you leaning one where the other and IT tells you who you are.

And i'm going to be IT really even go on to the pork check of website and we can get that information and actually take the typing tool. okay. And I would be interested to know whether you are a coronary adventure or whether you're a mindful choice's ker.

And when you get into the description of them, because what you just told me is, yeah, I love to cook, but health is important to me and baLances what you described as about yeah, then smoke onna, brisk, but and i'm to eat IT absolutely in the pet, use that one very important word. But and it's like we what we did is we defined the butter, and that's what we need to focus on. We all need to tell them what David newman wants, right? Because I want more me all the time, right? And I think towards right.

But that's not what every consumer wants, and that's why we've got to think differently if we're going to play this long game. You have got to create a pull through strategy. What we've been doing is a push strategy.

And push strategies don't work. You can you just try to push product into the market, make IT cheaping up. People want to buy IT, right? That only works for so long.

You've got to create a pull strategy where consumers actually won IT. And you know all those things you talk about, the organic post where people just blew up a brand that was pull through, they didn't force IT. They were like, man, i've got to be a part of this. You know, what was that one? Remember, IT was all over media few years ago was the bacon IT was the big wrapped bacon or IT .

was a pork in wrapped? Was IT or dote was IT was the like? So IT was like a love.

and bacon wrapped in treo, wrapped in more bacon, like baking, extreme or something, actually got millions of views. And people were cooking IT at every tailgate, right? And super bowl, yeah. And you know, you know, I work because IT became bacon as part of pop culture. I mean, I remember my dad telling me the first time he saw bottled water in the nineties, he picked up in the gas is he goes, huh? Yes, I don't never work.

Yes, I surprise my dad.

You know, I but now, look, yeah, it's part of pop culture.

Got liquid death. yeah. what?

IT is the primary IT is the best example of pop culture on steroids. And so you know, if you're gonna listen, if you just break IT all down, IT can't be boring. IT has to be cool.

IT has to be fun. Nobody wants to buy boring, they want to buy fun. And pork fits fun in the best way.

And I usually not a way that I always see this up, but it's it's it's that can drive you across the entire category because everything we have is built around some fun experience, and that's something that we can celebrate versus any of the other proteins. Yeah and you know you talk about this this nutrition thing. There's one other thing is really important.

I just want to put these words in deer ears so you can think about him. And that is pork as an ingredient that is important because I mentioned earlier, it's no longer just into the plate. The you listed IT off when you said i'm just going to go grab lunch, you listed off a handful of ingredients.

You didn't start with the middle right and build the thing around that. You are like, i'm going to do a little this and i'm going to do a little this. And IT all needs to be convenient.

That consumer, whether that is hastening audience or IT is a um audience of of you know Young genie, your everyday consumer out here. They are worried that's what they want. And the thing that I remind producers and and industry groups everyday is consumers have more choices today than that I ve ever had in history.

They don't have to choose port, right? They don't have to. So do you want na promote the only thing you make? I hope so. You want to be proud of IT, I hope so. Um and that's that's really where are laser being focuses in this business?

I was going to ask you something that I forgot that I came back to me animal fats and said, IT using oil all the time. C oils, people are really moving towards animal fats. You see the backing up being thrown on the blackstone.

You see beef tower being used. You see people going back to lord. You see all this stuff.

Have you guys picked up any trends like that? Have you seen that really emerging? So I mean.

we're certainly you're seen the trend, right? And there's lots of discussion about satory effect and is fat of four little word. There's all these conversations that are coming up.

And the thing is about animal facts is the truth is this is the real truth, our industries way behind and and i'm not to stat port the whole industry y's way, really getting sound research around the value of animal facts. And so doctor Christian hicks roof, whose he works on our staff, she's A P hd. In human nutrition, they're doing research around understanding the role of saturated fat in the diet.

And so there's definitely a trend there. And you know this in humans have been consuming, read me, an animal fat for thousands and thousands of years. And so me personally, I say quite frequently, we need to understand that correlation to why obesity and heart disease, right? And these major issues that are happening now, that these are not thousands of year old problem, these are problems that i've come about in the last hundred years.

So what role does red mean in port play in nutrition, in human nutrition? And so our board invested a significant amount of checkoff dollars starting three years ago around this human nutrition platform. And it's part of the research we've had. I told you right, flavor, nutrition and convenience. We've got to work as an entire industry to know more about human nutrition and know the role that animal fat plays in the diet.

Yeah, and I feel like a lot of consumers are interested in that and realizing that they're kind of running back to traditional foods like people are saying, eat real food, don't need the can, don't fry your stuff. A canoa oil, you know like that is really being talked about on a lot of platforms. Human listen.

human nutrition is going to be front center and twenty twenty five. yes. And I think that we know I would say that it's a poor board. We're ahead of that curve because we have a we have an nutrition team that is doing that research. We have more than twenty active research projects going on right now in the market.

So we're we're not reacting to, oh my gosh, now I need to be attention and nutrition now we're there but human nutrition um having been a scientist for years, i'll tell you human nutrition is one of the heart fields to work in and to publishing um because you're trying to manage um and understand the way people eat and people are sickle and really getting the truth out of fictional people. And then you got a baLance, where do they start on their health journey, right where they already are considered obese, they already where they already prediabetic, where were they at and then how did that impact them? And that takes millions of people, and that takes a lot of time to really understand the role that IT plays.

And that's where you start hearing these words about meet, analysis, ride and really understanding IT. But i've said this for years. I'll say that again. I mean, it's amazing to me that every january first eat right, exercise gets turned most billion dollar business.

hundred percent.

James are full. Yes.

there it's like I ve never seen you before. Yeah ah he doing he doesn't .

like IT because it's the one time of the year that somebody's on his machine you know like h you .

always got that guy and I watched three videos. He says you should supercard four know he's super cent and four exercises so he's on this machine, this machine, this machine, this machine. It's like, dude, got to let you got to let other people use the machines.

What part can cause? I'm sure i'm sure I know I was just think of this at the local level, at the state level, local level. What can the producers out there due to help move this message or what can they do to participate?

Yeah, that's that's a great question. And so here's what I would say is our states are grass roots game, right? Those are the boots on the ground, are producers are boots on the ground.

And so we were incredibly close with the states on everything we do, but in particular to this this new consumer marketing campaign. We have a marketing advisory group that art has a broad state representation. Iao is obviously on that committee as well as well as other states.

We still need advocates, right? I mean, again, but I I don't know if there's a group of farmers or group of people in agriculture who are more resilient, ent, right, and more proud of what they do than than pig farmers are. And I has been a tough couple of years, but we need advocates, right? And we also need students, people who understand like what is the role, what what is the port check off doing for me a lot more than you probably think.

And so you the states we're working very, very close to, for example, I would work we are managing the broader, larger campaign, but there is a lot of satellite pieces to that because if we're not right, I mentioned that eighty percent of the population, eighty percent of consumption is outside of IOS. That's true. That doesn't mean we need to discount idea.

We do one off programs with iva pork all the time, whether that is something, give a local example, would be fairway, right highway. Those are local chains that are there are only in the midwest that drive a crazy amount of volume. So that relationship we have a state is huge.

And I know that local producers tend have a very good connection with the state association. So I would just encourage, you know, all producers to get involved. Be an advocate asked the tough questions, right? I put us in the hot seat because there's a whole group of people at national power board who are just chopping at a bit to work passionately for for america's pig farmers.

Where can people learn and find out more whether they're consumer or producer.

right? Whether consumer or producer, you can go to the check off uh website. So check off that org h port.

Check off that org is actually the name of our website. And you can go there also. You can follow us on social media, right? We do have a weekly newsletter that we sent out.

That's the best way to get informed as to stay on top of that. I will say this. So this is important with a new brand will become a new platform and that will include social media that will include, you know, a new website.

So we'll have a very produce stakeholder facing side of that. Think PUA think about all the fundamental things we need producers to know about research and education. And then there will be the promotional side of this piece, which will be this new brand campaign.

So um no matter what you can find that at at the port, check off um on our website. You can also go there and take that typing tool with your buddies just for fun to find out where do you actually fit in this scale. And when you do, it'll tell you like all about the the very specific data that's associated IT, I think you will find that very interesting. awesome.

That's great, David. We really appreciate you coming on the show today. I think you dropped a lot of value. We we really appreciate you guys. If you ve got any value from the show, share IT out of the people you know, go to, go to pork, check off after work, take the test, find out more, and we'll see you back here next week for another.