THE return of one of Australia's most memorable advertising tag lines appears to be helping the pig industry convince consumers to put more "pork on their forks".
Nine months of television and radio advertising has coincided with a slight lift in pork's share of Australia's fresh meat sales at a time when farmers are getting increasingly uneasy about inroads being made on their industry's profitability by cheap, processed pigmeat imports.
Until early this year the phrase "Get some pork on your fork" had not been used by marketers for almost a decade.
Although last employed in pork promotions in 2001-02, it continued to rate as one of advertising's most successful catchlines, and was too good to ignore according to marketing officials.
About 60 per cent of consumers surveyed in January could correctly recall the tagline if prompted, rising to 77pc by Ocotober, while in a random poll of memorable advertising lines last month it scored the second highest result behind breakfast cereal Nutrigrain's "Iron man food" at 55pc.
Slogans for Mastercard, Weetbix and McDonalds were also in the top five, but well behind pork.
With the high Australian dollar luring in big volumes of imported ham and bacon products, Australian Pork Limited (APL) has vowed to make the most of any opportunity to boost sales of local fresh pork (and Australian ham and bacon) to avoid an oversupply build up.
Producers are particularly worried about boosting sales in the January to April period when pig production hits a climate-induced peak in Australia, and piggery earnings are hit by a traditional sales lull.
Taking full advantage of the chance to revive the "pork on your fork" line as part of a "slightly edgy" campaign focused on every day meal uses for pork, APL marketing general manager, Peter Haydon, instigated electronic media ads running nationally for three weeks every month from February.
The campaign, at a relatively modest cost of about $200,000 a month, has targeted a specific adult demographic group, but Mr Haydon said it was achieving good consumer recognition with wider audiences, too.
The TV and radio advertising - the first by APL since 2007 - has coincided with new industry marketing efforts with butchers and restaurants to help them get better value from pork sales and, in turn, lift fresh pork's recognition with consumers.
Mr Haydon said adding value to pork products in the butcher shop - such as offering shoppers more semi-prepared, ready-to-cook meals - was likely to require fewer input costs and possibly less usage of high value meat lines, adding more to a butcher's gross margin.
Preparing a value-added product not only gave shoppers more choice, but retailer returns were likely to be more profitable than if they had bought and cut up another carcase of meat.
"We looking at working with butchers on developing ways to get more customers through their doors, and giving them ideas on making the best possible return on their pork products," Mr Haydon said.
Other initiatives being explored ranged from developing weekly email broadcasts to a butcher's top 100 customers, alerting them to specials, what's in season or menu ideas, or a shop website encouraging customers to order via the Internet.
"We're also talking with restaurants about where they put pork on their menu and how often," he said pointing out that diners were less likely to choose a pork main course if they chose it as an entree.
Pork spare ribs were a frequent starter dish on restaurant menus, but Mr Haydon said APL's consultations with chefs and restaurant owners might, for example, look at options like getting a higher return from spare ribs as a main course meal.
He said industry research showed that once restaurants to included two pork dishes on a menu, rather than one, pork consumption lifted by 86pc.
Three pork dishes on a menu generated about 160pc more sales than one.
