Alberta Pork wanted chefs to share their passion for pork, as well as their recipes on how to prepare this meat. The Passion for Pork campaign, which began in April 2012, included a website and over 900 television spots. This created major awareness for the website with 300-400 visits a day. However, as soon as the television campaign stopped, the daily hits dropped to 50-70 visits a day.

To reinvigorate the interest in pork at the consumer level, Alberta Pork reps contacted their distributor partner, who suggested an embroidered chef coat and flexible cutting boards imprinted with the Passion for Pork logo to be given away at various events. As distribution of the cutting boards was underway, a few people provided feedback that they planned to use the cutting boards as place mats.

One event was a high-profile dinner in Edmonton that attracted more than 1,400 diners where chefs clad in their logoed chef coats prepared favorite dishes from the region. The Passion for Pork cutting boards were set out as place mats so people could take them home afterward. The promotion went over extremely well.

The campaign also went viral. Alberta Pork started receiving fun and crazy photographs of people posing with the pig cutting boards in a variety of costumes and locations. Alberta Pork is using the photos on its websites and promoting them through social media to increase demand for the boards. Website visits have again increased and at a much lower cost than buying television spots.

Do you have a campaign that needs a boost? Your distributor partner can help you utilize products that may have more than one application, like the cutting boards doubling as place mats. This will give your company logo greater exposure.