Barn Talk - Pork Quality, Market Growth, and Innovation w/ David Newman

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In this episode, our special guest is David Newman, the Senior Vice President for Market Growth at the National Pork Board. We'll dive deep into the pork industry, exploring everything from how food and clothing originate from farms to the intricacies of the Pork Checkoff program. David will share insights on domestic and international pork marketing, the pivotal role of research and education, and the comprehensive new marketing campaigns aimed at making pork an everyday staple. We’ll also discuss consumer trends, the importance of pork quality, and how digital marketing strategies are being tailored to reach diverse audiences. Plus, the conversation won't shy away from the evolving market dynamics, generational shifts in eating habits, and exciting future plans for the industry's growth. Whether you're a pork producer, a culinary adventurer, or just a mindful consumer, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss.  Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 Share the show and leave a review. 05:37 National Pork Board began 1980s for pork promotion. 12:16 Focus on consumer demand is crucial for business. 16:11 Marketing surrounds us; essential for business success. 24:31 Emphasis on multicultural marketing, especially Hispanic market. 28:58 Engage younger audiences to promote pork benefits. 34:18 Target pork consumers using precise digital filters. 40:31 Balance flavor and nutrition in marketing messages. 43:40 Relaunching pork industry brand with widespread collaboration. 48:09 Changing consumer behavior frustrates, highlights generational shift. 57:14 Researching saturated fat's role in modern health. 01:02:12 Support Iowa; collaborate with local pork producers. 01:03:42 Research focus, promotional campaign, website engagement. ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn? Stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a guest episode. Got a great guest. They can highlight a lot that's going on in the pork industry, and we're going to get into it.

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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 Sawyer started Farmer Grate. He's like, I don't know, I'm going to have to do something to fill in the, fill in the hole here. So you're better to listen to, I think. I do have a face for radio. Absolutely right about that. That's all right. We got a great guest today. As you know, whether you're in the business or not, you've heard me ramble on about it. The hog business, hog business has been a pretty tough road to hoe for the last few years, and there's a little light at the end of the tunnel, a little light at the end of the tunnel, but it's tough. And today we have a guy that is on the forefront of doing everything he can

and everything that the national pork 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 Chekhov's most recent work to build a bigger appetite for pork. So without any further ado, let's get into it. David Newman, welcome to Barn Talk. Yeah, thank you. Glad to be here. So there's people that obviously aren't involved with pork production or don't know their way around National Pork Board. So why don't you give us a little bit of background about what you do and also what's the purpose of pork checkoff and how you guys operate?

Wow. Okay. Here we go. So in my role at National Pork Board, senior vice president of Mark 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 and we'll come back to that in just a minute is part of what I oversee so I oversee the domestic marketing team so that's the promotional activities think about right iconic brands that you're familiar with the other white meat that would have been managed through the staff that I work with every day international marketing. So once we get access into a market, that's what our sister organization,

MPC, the National Port Producers 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 port board. So 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 interesting story in the pig business as to how national port board came to be. And I'm going to say, I'm going to start in 1985, but don't worry, this goes really fast. So back up 1985 or in the early 1980s, certainly we know there was a farm crisis, right? We still had a massive number of independent pork producers and the producers came together and they rallied together to say,

how could we build a concerted effort around pork promotion? You know, the business was different than it is today, even though there are still thousands of independent producers, especially here in Iowa, 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 long series of events,

and the checkoff was born. And when the checkoff was born in 1985, it was actually under the purview of the National Pork Producers Council. And the goal there, what was called the Act in Order, the check-off system literally runs under congressional oversight. So, and by the way, there are more than 13 check-off 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. Yes. So there's check-offs for everything. So we, essentially, there is a levy from every pig sold that goes into, a, let's just call it a checking account since we're saying checkoff. And that assessment that is taken from every animal that is raised in the United States is put into the pork checkoff. And we manage those dollars very specifically for only three things. Research, education,

and promotion. So research could be, I mean, look at how incredibly efficient we have become in the last 30 or 40 years. I mean, it's amazing, right? everything from ventilation to feed-to-gain ratios to barn design litter size I mean look at litter size right pig per saver years is still going up all of those things we helped contribute towards what be it animal science or animal health right so how do we prevent African swine fever from coming in the United States or how do we think about endemic disease like perss what is research we can do to better understand that and possibly eliminate it or regionalize. There's a million avenues there. So that's research. Education, the most classic example is port

quality assurance plus. So, right, every packer in the United States requires you to be PQA 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, sorting pigs, loading pigs, transporting them. That's the education component. And then promotion, which is the area that I oversee at National Port Board, and that is how do we help drive volume and 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 Port Producers Council. In 2001, the National Port Producers Council was separated. This was a guidance by Congress and actually broke the industry into two organizations. And that is where the National Port Producers Council was born that does advocacy work and policy work. And National Port Board was then created to branch off into research, education, and promotion. And the reason that happened was there was 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 happened since 2001 and here we are.

Well, 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 bar. You've heard me rant for practically since this thing started. It's been a rough road a hoe for pork producers and well pretty much pork producers all over the world really. The market has been pretty tough for the last couple years. It's a good thing that we're all as resilient as we are because those people that went through the 80s and went through the 90s, we know a few things about tough times, but what is porkboard doing today 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. Yeah. To say it's a popular topic would be an understatement. So I've been at the portboard

about a year and a half. So just back up a year and a half and look at where we were. Yeah. Interesting time to come in and start talking about promotion. But, you know, the word 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, I'm third generation in this business.

That's all my parents did for a living my entire life. They were hog farmers. So I remember stories about the 1980s, you know, and my dad used to tell me, They had the best loan at the bank at 20.5% interest. And interestingly, I was born in Pocahontas, Iowa, and that's my parents' farm for 20 years. So just to say that I'm a huge fan of Fork Promotion, let's say that that's my shameless plug,

and everybody that knows me knows that that's there. And whenever I was given the opportunity to come to the organization and help lead the team, 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 exists for under one thing only. and that is that a consumer walks into a retail 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 piece is so critically important that we understand. And the last couple years have really taught us some very important lessons. And this is where we're really going to get global here in this conversation and get out there. For 30 years, this business has rowed the export wave. 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 is smack dab in the middle of that 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 relevant to Americans today. And while we need to celebrate and continue to push hard on exports domestically, this is crucial. Because to scale it as one example, we export about 8 billion pounds of product a year. We consume 21 billion in country.

Do you feel 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 we're producers, but I'm, I grew up, ferro to finish, we ferrored right here on this farm, but there was always this assumption. I guess my roundabout way of saying, we just assumed that this market was always going to be here and we didn't really need to do much about it. It's like, you can have your steak, but the pig is going to own breakfast forever, And people are going to eat pork chops because they're not going to buy steak all the time. And it's a good deal.

And let's face it, you know, you can only eat so much chicken. I mean, I feel like that was our assumption. But we're finding out that as generations change and 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, and this stuff just sells itself. You know, we can clear a half a billion pounds a week and everybody, no one's going to stop eating bacon, right? And no one's going to stop eating sausage and ham and all this other stuff.

But the reality is, while pork is loved by literally billions of people, it doesn't sell itself. and if you want to be proactive and you want to be progressive to make something relevant with consumers, 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 clothes you wear. I mean, look, there's marketing everywhere. If you don't believe me, just pick up your phone. Yep. Start doom scrolling because you are getting hit by every company. in the world right now on the things you like. So if you don't have promotion, and listen, I, uh, uh, growing up in a family of farmers, I think there's this thing about marketing always

feels a little fluffy, you know, or what they say today, crunchy, right? You know, 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 got to remind them why they want to consume it. And the world cannot just revolve around bacon, y'all. I mean, bacon is the best thing that ever happened to the pork business. Thank God for it. But there's only 16 pounds in a pig. If we could just breed that pig with 100 pounds of bacon in it. We talk about that all the time. It's like, man, it'd be nice to have 100 pound of bacon out of a pig. Wouldn't it? Yeah. For years, if you could have bred the ham off of it, that would have been

good too. But that's just not the way it works. So we have to think about this. in a nearly whole hog approach, right? You know, you've got to think about ribs. You've got to think about shoulders. You've got to think about hams. We've got to think about bellies. We definitely need to think about loins and how we move that entire animal and remind consumers of all the awesome dishes and culinary experiences they can have beyond just Christmas or Easter,

right, special occasion type stuff. You got to go from special occasion. to every day. And that is, that is the goal, right, is to move this from special occasion to everyday occasion. And, and it's possible because pork 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 pork being so popular everywhere else in the world. We have a heck of an opportunity to get it done, but it's not going to happen all by itself. And if you really sum this back up to one of your first questions is simply put,

I go, that's why the pork board exists. We have individual packers 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. We are out here to help you, whether you've got 50 sows or 50,000 sows. And we love the fact that there are other competitors in the market. But if we can be a 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 tie lifts all boats. And that's really why we exist and how we want to exist on behalf of the 60,000 pork producers we represent. Yeah, I think barbecue culture has been a trend that just keeps going up and up. And that's a really, you talk about getting consumers pork every day. I just feel like more and more when you get on TikTok or you get on social media, barbecuing is really ramping up. And people use a lot of pork when it comes to barbecue. That's been really, really great. You touch 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

guys found that might be an interesting metric of research that you find have found with the consumer. Sure. Well, so, you know, after all this marketing speak that I was saying earlier, you know, we got to go after them. If you're going to do it in a targeted, an efficient and responsible way, because these are your dollars, these are the 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 podcasts and you guys talk about the baby boomer generation, right, and how that influences different things in our society. Well, the baby boomer generation has carried the pork business for the last 30 years. But as they literally exit the market, or if nothing else start to become older and age out of the market, they're eating significantly less. We cannot really. rely on the boomer generation to carry us forward through another downturn cycle. So that consumer

segmentation we did, it breaks consumers into seven very distinct 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, you can't see the same, but we have this Consumer Connect book. It's 155 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 you a couple of examples. So I'll give you my segment. My segment is called a culinary adventurer. So, right, we have a huge part of the population who, a lot of these barbecue guys would fall into that, who are very confident with meat. They're very confident with pork. But they're also really confident in,

taking on complicated recipes, right? So they're not afraid to buy all the stuff. I'm going to give you an example of me. Buy all the stuff to make El Pastor and actually go out and find this achote paste. You have to have to really do El Paso authentically Mexican. So, you know, the culinary adventure is willing to do that. They'll take on a global flare or a culinary perspective. And one of the other segments is just called the confident meat eater. And that's everybody you know that has three smokers on their back deck. They're not afraid to take on a pork shoulder roast or not afraid to smoke a whole belly. Those people are 20% of the population and nearly 20% 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'll go to one of the bottom groups. So there's a group called the Meat Minimized. If you're in the pork business, it's not a real responsible use of allocating dollars to focus on a segment of the population who is against eating meat or who is looking for meat alternatives. So it tells us where we can be more strategic with the money and more strategic with the actual marketing execution into each one of the seven segments. That's 100% right. I mean, there's no use to 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. Talk a little bit about some of that's demographics, but also some of that is ethnicity, because we're very, one great thing 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 Hispanic, and Hispanics love pork. And that's a good thing. Yeah, it's a fact. How do you reach those people?

Yeah, that's a great question. So for the last five years, especially, we have put a huge emphasis on multicultural marketing. So actually one of my colleagues, Jose de Jesus, who is our AVP of consumer marketing. And we're going to talk about our new campaign here in a little bit. But Jose came into his role at the National Port Board to run multicultural marketing. And so we have two very distinct platforms that hone in on your question and your comment about how critically important that population demographic is. is. So we have an entire portion of folks at the pork board who work very specifically on the

Hispanic market. And the return on investment there is wild. It's wild. In our checkoff dollars for 2024 where we're at to now, our return on investment is more than 25 to 1 on marketing dollars. So this again is, and I'll say this later, but it's about you got to learn to fish where the fish are, right? And we know that 80% of the population growth for the last 20 years in this country has been multicultural and 90% of the growth moving forward is going to be multicultural. The bulk of that, which is Hispanic. And the Hispanic consumer in the United States has trillions of dollars of spending power. Trillions, not billions, trillions, of dollars. And pork is incredibly culturally relevant to them.

And we know that if we can, and I'll give you an example of one of the recent Hispanic marketing platforms that we ran here this past year, knowing that pig farmers are struggling, knowing that we've had a hard time, it's like, guys, we've got to really allocate dollars where it matters with our board. And we did some really specific multicultural targeted marketing

in high population areas of multicultural. So think about really focusing on consumer, the Hispanic consumers in Houston who shop at, you know, a retailer like H.E.B. Let's think about markets like Miami. Let's think about markets like L.A., Southern California, you know, where you have a larger population of Hispanic, and let's focus on them to what they're looking for.

So we have a platform that's called Pondelet Pork, which literally translates into add pork. 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 separate platform there that's called soulful pork, and our return on investment there is big right now. And here's what's interesting is each one of those audiences,

they're concerned about different things. African-American audience is concerned about nutrition. They're concerned about the roll pork plays in nutrition, so we need to make sure we're targeting them with the right messages. And then if you look at the Hispanic audience, they're just thinking about pork differently, thinking about pork as an ingredient. You know, carnitas aren't necessarily center of the plate.

They're an ingredient as part of a dish. And so we've got to think about this beyond just the way I'm assuming we grew up, Okay. Bone in pork chop, middle of the plate, mashed potatoes on one side, green beans on the other, right? That is not the future of how we deliver pork. Things change. Yeah. And something else that, as you were talking about that, that definitely has changed. 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 obviously why you're tailing your message. But I guess the other thing would be if you're a pork producer and you don't see those pork ads, that means that you guys are doing your job because you're not preaching to the choir. You're not spending money to tell people like us that we should eat more pork because we're already eating it.

Yeah, you know, it's hard, right? Because our stakeholders are our most important audience, you know, to address that question of what is the checkoff doing for me? And I said this at a talk over the summer, I was talking to a good friend of mine, Bill Teddinger from Northwest Iowa, used to be on our board. And I said, Bill, if you hear my voice or our voice in the combine this fall, we may not be doing our job.

Yeah. because I don't need to go to World Pork Expo and pass out pork jobs and tell people to eat more pork. I need to be at a more relevant conference where there's a ton of Gen Zs and millennials, right, and people who are less familiar with our product and remind them why it's delicious, why it's nutritious and why they should eat more of it in their day-to-day, right, everyday occasion. And so don't get me wrong, we're still pushing our message and making sure our farmers know because they need a rally cry. And the last 24 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, well, we're doing this to make you feel good. It's saying we're doing this because all of this research we've collected points to one direction. We've got to focus very laser beam focused on who, the future consumers of pork and we've got to advertise and that does mean creating a new brand and it means creating a new brand tagline even something that we is broad enough that you can get behind it

whether you are focusing on a multicultural 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 a new brand campaign in early 2025. Yeah, digital marketing for us is like a lot of what we do. It's really, that's the reason we're here. That's the reason we're here. And so what are some ways that you guys are using digital marketing to reach that consumer? Well, so this is the, the, the, The question I get from your everyday pig farmer in America is, yeah, Newman, that's great.

Love the story. Great, great line. But what's different? We've had the other white meat. We've had be 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? 2005 is so much incredibly different than 1995 when I was a teenager that it blows my mind, right? I didn't have a cell phone until I went to college. And I definitely didn't have Facebook, which is funny because now they say Facebook's only for people. But yeah, but, and I guess that classifies me because I still have it. But the thing about this

is, and the point I'm getting to is that back in the day, this isn't disparaging any marketing campaign we'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 printed in what year? That's probably 77. Yeah, there you go. In 1977, you had to put up a billboard to tell people about what you did. You had to advertise in your local feed store or in your, you know, Sears and Roebuck or wherever. And that, that is just radically different today. If you're going to, to take a more laser beam approach to marketing, you better be doing digital marketing. So 99% of this campaign is digitally focused. And here's what's, I mean, it's, 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 going to develop a creative concept. Let's just 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? And they're celebrating this moment as a family. And they're cooking ribs and they're eating pork belly and they're obviously all very happy. And here comes in tagline, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's, It's emotional. It hits on the attributes of flavor, those type of things. If you package that, you're not going to send that to one of the segments. There's another one that's called Mindful Choice Maker.

And this is a segment of the population, which is actually quite large. But they're 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. Well, who does that resonate with? The confident meat eater, right? The culinary adventure who's like, yeah, actually, I do need to go buy some ribs and call some buddies.

And the weather's still nice out this fall. And actually, Saturday, we need to have a shindig, you know, up in the barn and cook some meat. And that's really about how this digital piece 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 meat. eat eater. You can filter down to the mindful choice maker and you can also filter down to the geographic area, which is really, really important in pork to make sure that you are fishing where the fish are because 80% of the consumption and 80% of the population of pork is in the states where

there are no pigs. Yeah, isn't that crazy? It's the coasts. That's good though. That's good. Do you feel like, so for just the producer side, we've noticed genetics are kind of starting to change to be a more fat, fatter, juicier cut of pork. You know, for a long time, we're trying to be lean, lean, lean. Now it's kind of going the other way. And I think people, just from the producer's side, and it kind of seems like this, because we're on the ground floor of it, that the genetics, genetics are changing based on the consumer wanting, wanting tastier pork, maybe a little fatter pork, marbled pork. Is that something you guys are seeing on your end too? Yeah. So, um, Now I'm going to preface on my background a little bit and say, by training, I'm a meat scientist.

So it's farmer, but I did a PhD in meat science. I spent 20 years publishing, publishing research on pork quality. So I'm a huge fan of pork quality. Not careful. This guy, he's a Burke guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a every breed guy because here's the end of the day. It's not just about premium, right? Like Burke, that's not going to fit the mold. of the entire country. What we've done, Sawyer, to your question, is we've made pork incredibly

more consistent. You back up 10 years ago and pork quality was incredibly inconsistent. And when I say inconsistent, I'm talking about color. I'm talking about marbling, right, the way that we sort some loins for export, like the Japanese export, those type of things. So here's what I would say. We're getting more consistent. I've published a ton of research on that. when you look at just 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, fat equals flavor, which is true to the core. It is true, right?

The flavor of any protein is driven by fat. One thing that I've pointed out is, I get this question quite frequently as like, All right, Newman, I understand you guys are doing this consumer marketing, but 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 pork 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.

You take a picnic or a butt or you take anything else. there's no problem. When we think about quality, listen, everybody kind of gets driven to the loin, right? Which frustrates me that it's been the loser on the cutout for 40 years, right? But it's really hard to tell a producer who's losing money that they need to invest in genetics for quality. 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 it good? Yeah. Mm-hmm. 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 here who are putting a focus on certain genetics, certain feeding strategies, right? So, and the truth is, there's just a lot of dang good pork out here in the marketplace today. Can it be better? I'm sure that could be questioned, a thousand different ways, but I've had some great eating experiences in the pork business, and I've had some really bad eating 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 pork because more than any other protein, pork is the most diverse. It's the most relevant from a culinary 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 pork producers cook at the 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 loins, those sandwiches or the pork chop on a stick. Because all it is is it's cooked right. You know, it's... We use the meat thermometer. Wow. It's cooked right. Big difference. But they, you know, they think it's the best thing.

It's the best piece of pork that they've had. If it's somebody that is not your everyday meat eater, they eat that. It's like, it's so good. Well, it's because we cooked it right. I mean, it's not because there's some fancy recipe that we marinated all this pork in and that we, you know, we basted it as they were going, no, we have this giant cooker and we're cooking thousands of these things, but they're cooked right.

Yep. And they turn out perfect. People love them. Yeah. But to back up a little bit when you were talking about, you know, fat equals flavor, 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 want it 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've got to find a creative way to tell them that because you can't just say, oh, you need more fat because that equals flavor because the flag goes up, I'm not, you know,

I'm not giving my family fat. So it's a, it's a... And then the barbecue guys are like, yeah, let's have the fat cap on there. Let's... Yeah. I want the chop with the thickest. Marketing and the social media side...

of our society is so interesting today and what can just go off. And the example I will give is, have you heard about how much free publicity Applebee's got? Chili's. Oh, yeah, it's Chili's. There was a woman not paid by Chili's, had nothing to do with it, but she went to a Chili's. And what was it that she really liked?

Some cheese. Triple-dipper. appetizer. She had that and loved it and that video exploded. And Chili's got like, I can't remember what they're, they're, uh, I think they're up like 30% this year. Just because, just from that. Just one video that one person made changed the entire market for that, for that restaurant. Yep. And it's like, that's the power of social media. One pork dish can change like that. That's it. the right person. Yeah. I mean, you look at the organic nature of that and it is wild. Look at who

some of the biggest influencers are on YouTube. They say one thing. 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 an incredible power behind earned media. That's media you didn't pay for versus paid media. And that is. is a great example of you want to build something organic, right, and get people to 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's a huge segment of the population that doesn't even know bacon is pork. Yeah. It's its own, it's its own identity. It's its own baby,

right? And it's amazing. Not only is it literally amazing. Oh, you remember Fanical's flavor? Yeah. by the way. So why is it good? Because it tastes good. Yep. 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 25 and in really relaunching a brand for the pork industry. I didn't say for the National Port Board. 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 here in Clive. This is this is us working really closely with the entire industry to say, how can we be a catalyst and an ally to lift the category? And believe me, we have support.

And there are some things where I talk about this individual marketing, which we are going to do by segment. But something that's really important for everyone to understand is there's some universal truths that apply to every category. And our data, our research, say there are three universal truths, non-negotiables, 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 confident meat eater, you're a simple feeder, or you're a culinary

adventure, flavor drives everything. And I think that should make sense. There's a reason you eat what you eat, drink what you drink, right? So flavor, pork flavor is very important. second is balance and that leans on this human nutrition piece so we have a team of researchers that work specifically with RDs registered dietitians they work with physicians assistants and physicians which is the hardest group to get to right to talk about the role of red meat and 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 all right so you have A, flavor, B, nutrition, or balance, however you want to look at that. And then three, convenience. It's got to be convenient. And if you're not playing in snacking, if you're not playing in smaller package size and putting stuff into the hands, Gen Zs and millennials, they are the future. Yep, they want to grab it and go. You don't have a choice.

They're the future consumer. So this new campaign is going to be focused on them around those three non-negotiables. but convenience is king today. And you know it. Look at home meal replacement. 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 in 1995 and look at the gas station convenience store that you go into in 2024.

They are radically different. And there's a lot of convenient items in there. They got protein in them. Yep. I do the 90 second rice a lot of days. you know, put it in the microwave, do, do, do, 90 seconds. That's what I want. Yep, that's, 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 it quick, you know? Yeah. I think you know how it's something better than rice. Yeah, well, something that 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 that love pork sticks. And that's something that I just don't know why pork sticks. sticks haven't really taken off because when 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 pork sticks more, but I'd love to figure out a way to do so. Pork jerky. Yep. Could you make my head small enough to wrap around a pork stick? Yeah. I could market that. You want to know why? Because, I mean, there's a ton of very relevant pork items, or 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 pork items, right? But it's about

relevance. You remember that thing about relevance? When people think about jerky, here's my test, what do they say? Beef. There you go. And you can say the thing about other proteins too. And are you being marketed that? Yes. Probably. You remember when Randy Savage used to be the folks first Slim gyms. Right? I think about like, that's marketing. Yep.

That's how it works. You got to remind people to buy your product and tell them why it's awesome and why it tastes good, why it's good for them, and why it's convenient. You can grab and go with it. I mean, it's kind of that example of how things move going forward. Something that I just like kind of hit me when we were sitting here talking about this is this change in the consumers and your generation is so like that is 100% spot on because, you know, you grew up. I 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 his site. And at 2.30 or 3 o'clock, you call me, and you're like, yeah, I'm just leaving the warehouse. I'm going to stop at home and get something to eat. I haven't eaten yet today. I 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 snacking. And I mean, it's like he'll call and be like wanting to do something. You want to shoot that at noon? You want to do this at noon? No, you don't do that at noon. We're eating lunch at noon. But to that generation, their schedule, they don't think of like meal time doesn't mean to them. and he's not even a generation removed.

I mean, he grew up at a house where that's what we did. But the way he lives his life and the way his fiancee lives her life together, meal time is kind of like an afterthought. They need to get their, like, you're always like, oh, I got to get my, I got to get my protein in or whatever. That might be at 10 o'clock in the morning. It might be at 10 o'clock at night. And it's just, I don't know if I'm, I don't know if I'm like the example of,

what a lot of people my age do, but convenient times everything. We're realizing times everything, our health's everything. And sometimes I eat food for fuel, not just flavor all the time. I mean, I love dinner. Don't get me wrong. That's where I probably would do the most experimenting. But when you're just going about your day, yeah, you got to get stuff done. And it's it's ground beef, ground pork, pork loin with 90 second rice and an apple and banana. Yeah. Go on. All right. So we got to hold the phone for a second here and say, I want you to think about what he just said. I think about food as fuel. I've got to get my protein in.

Torque, you never said that in your life. I think of food as. You've never. I daydream about what Trish and I are going to have for supper. I'm like, don't get me wrong. Here's a question. I'm a foodie. Where 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, and I'm in the, I'm active in the gym, right? I want to build muscle. I want to. So, you know, eating deli meat for lunch every day doesn't fit my goals. And, you know, it doesn't always make, it might make me feel a little more lethargic. So I don't know, I optimize for sometimes fuel over food and enjoying the food so much. Like when I go to mom and dad, it's, yeah, dad just smoked a brisket. And I'm, I'm definitely going to partake in that, but I'm not doing that all the time.

So, you know, all right. So in this whole, this is fascinating. I mean, you couldn't have said that better for me if I tried to think about an example of why Gen Z, a millennial, and this focus has to happen to think about this. So as part of this segmentation, we have something that's a typing tool. And that's how this works, right? Tens of thousands of people have taken this typing tool. you answer a handful of very simple questions, and it gets you leaning one way or the other,

and it tells you who you are. And I'm going to be really, you can go onto the Pork Checkoff website, and we can get you that information and actually take the typing tool, okay? And I would be interested to know whether you are a culinary adventure or whether you're a mindful choice maker. 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 balance. What you described was about, yeah, dad's smoking a brisket, but, and I'm going to eat it.

Absolutely. And then you use that one very important word, but. And it's like we, what we did is we defined the butt. And that's what we need to focus on. We don't need to tell them what David Newman wants, right? Because I want more meat all the time, right? And I think towards the same way. I'm with you.

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've got to create a pull-through strategy. What we've been doing is a push strategy. And push strategies don't work. You just try to push product into the market, make it cheap enough people want to buy it. That only works for so long. You've got to create a pull strategy where consumers actually want it.

And you know all those things you talk about the, organic posts 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. What was that one? You remember? It was all over media a few years ago was the bacon. It was the big wrapped bacon thing. Oh, yeah. It was a porkloin wrapped. Was it a or no, it was a, it was the sauce. It was like a loaf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Trizo wrapped in more bacon. It was like the bacon extreme or something. Yeah, exactly right. I got millions of views and people were cooking it at every tailgate. Right. And Super Bowl. Yeah. And you know why I work because it became bacon as part

of pop culture. Yep. I mean, I remember my dad telling me the first time he saw bottled water in the 90s, he picked it up in a gas station. He goes, huh. He goes, I don't ever work. That's probably my dad. You know, I mean, but now look, it's part of pop culture. You got liquid death. Yeah. Water in a can. It is the primary, it is the best example of pop culture on steroids. And so, you know, if you're going to, 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 it's usually not a way that I always tee this up, but 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 that's really important. I just want to put these words into your ear so you can think about them. And that is pork as an ingredient. That is important. because I mentioned earlier it's no longer just center of the plate. You listed 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 meat, right, and build a thing around it. You're 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 it is a Hispanic audience or it is a audience of, you know, young Gen Z, your everyday consumer out here, They're worried. That's what they want. And the thing that I remind producers and industry groups every day is consumers have more choices today than they have ever had in history. They don't have to choose pork. They don't have to. So do you want to promote the only thing you make?

I hope so. You want to be proud of it? I hope so. And that's really where our laser beam focus is in this business. I was going to ask you something that I've. I forgot, but it came back to me. Animal fats. Instead of using oil all the time.

Seed oils. People are really moving towards animal fats. You see the bacon up being thrown on the blackstone. You see beef tallow being used. You see people going back to lard. You see all this stuff. Have you guys picked up any trends like that? Have you seen that really emerging?

So, I mean, certainly you're seeing the trend, right? And there's lots of discussion about saturation. of fats. And, right, is fat a four-letter word? There's all these conversations that are coming up. And the thing is about animal fats is the truth is, this is the real truth. Our industry is way behind. And I'm not just talking about pork.

The whole industry is way behind on really getting sound research around the value of animal fats. And so Dr. Kristen Hicks-Roof, who's a. She works on our staff. She's a PhD 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, listen, humans have been consuming red meat and 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, these are not thousands of year old problems. These are problems that have come about in the last hundred years. So what role does red meat and pork 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 eat the canola.

Don't fry your stuff in canola. oil, you know, like that is really being talked about on a lot of platforms. Listen, human nutrition is going to be front and center in 2025. Yep. And I think that we, you know, I would say that at the port board, we're ahead of that curve because we have a, we have a nutrition team that is doing that research. We have more than 20 active research projects going on right now in the market. So we're not, we're not reacting to, oh my gosh, now we need to pay attention to nutrition.

No, we're there. But human nutrition, having been a scientist for years, I'll tell you, human nutrition is one of the hardest fields to work in and to publish in because you're trying to manage and understand the way people eat. And people are fickle and really getting the truth out of fickle people. And then you've got to balance. Where did they start on their health journey? Yep. Right? Were they already considered obese?

were they already pre-diabetic? 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 meta-analysis, ride, and really understanding it. But I've said this for years. I'll say it again. I mean, it's amazing to me that every January 1st, eat right and exercise gets turned into a multi-billion dollar business. It's 100%. 100.000. Jims are full. Yep. They're full. Yeah.

He was like, I've never seen you before. Yeah. Well, he doesn't like it because it's the one time of the year that somebody's on his machine, you know. He's like, oh my God. You always got that guy that just watched three videos. He says, you should super set four, you know, he's super set in four exercises. So he's on this machine, this machine, this machine, this machine. It's like, dude, you got to let other people use the machines.

What part can, because I'm sure, I'm sure, I know I was just think of this, at the local level, at the state level and local level, what can the producers out there do to help move this message? Or what can they do to participate? Yeah, awesome. That's a great question. And so here's what I would say is, our states are our grassroots game, right? Those are the boots on the ground. our producers are our boots on the ground. And so we work incredibly close with the states on everything we do. But in particular to this new consumer marketing campaign, we have a marketing

advisory group that already has a broad state representation. Iowa pork is obviously on that committee as well, as well as other states. We still need advocates, right? I mean, again, I don't know if there's a group of farmers or a group of people in agriculture who are more resilient, right, and more proud of what they do than pig farmers are. And I know it's been a tough couple of years, but we need advocates, right? And we also need students, people who understand, like, what is the role of what is the pork checkoff doing for me? A lot more than you probably think. And so, you know, the states, we're working very, very close. For example, Iowa pork, we're managing the broader, larger campaign, but there is a lot of satellite pieces to that.

Because if we're not, right, I mentioned that 80% of the population, 80% of consumption is outside of Iowa. That's true. That doesn't mean we need to discount Iowa. We do one-off programs with Iowa pork all the time, whether that is something, you know, give you a local example would be a fairway, right? Hi-V. Those are local chains that are only in the Midwest that drive a crazy amount of volumes. So that relationship we have with states is huge. And I know that local producers tend to have a very good connection with the state association. So I would just encourage, you know, all producers to get involved, be an advocate,

ask the tough questions, right? Put us in the hot seat because there's a whole group of people at National Port Board who are just chomping at the 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. So whether consumer or producer, you can go to the Chekhov website. So checkoff.org, porkcheckoff.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 send out.

That's the best way to get informed is to stay on top of that. I will say this, though, because this is important. With a new brand, we'll become a new platform. And that will include social media. That will include, you know, a new website. So we'll have a very producer-stakeholder-facing side of that. Think PQA. Think about all the fundamental things we need producers to know about research and education.

And then there will be the promotional side of, of this piece, which will be this new brand campaign. So no matter what, you can find that at the Pork Checkoff 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 all about the very specific data that's associated with it. I think you'll find that very interesting. Awesome. That's great.

Well, David, we really appreciate you coming on the show today. I think you dropped a lot of value. We really appreciate it. Guys, if you got any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know, go to, go to porkcheckoff.org, take the test, find out more, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode.