Pulled pork campaign had £7.8m 'halo effect' on fresh pork, says AHDB

Supermarkets and processors helped drive a £7.8m surge in fresh pork sales by working together on pulled pork, AHDB has claimed.

The first phase of AHDB Pork’s pulled pork campaign, which ran for a six-week period from 27 April to 7 June 2015, resulted in a 21.4% year-on-year increase in pork shoulder volumes [Kantar six weeks ending 7 June 2015], with 206,000 more households buying pork shoulder.

However, it also had a considerable “halo effect” on the wider pork industry, AHDB Pork claimed, directly driving £7.8m of “incremental sales” of fresh pork and value-added pork products.

The majority of mults got on board with the campaign, which included TV and digital advertising, in-store marketing activity and NPD.

Kantar Worldpanel senior consultant Paul Ward said the halo effect of the industry-wide campaign was “much stronger” than what was usually achieved by fmcg brand campaigns.

“We attribute this to the fact that the advertising was capable of driving not only purchasing of the featured product (brand), but also of the wider competitive market,” he added.

“This would not be expected to be the case for a brand where the same logic would say that advertising for a particular cooking sauce drives not only purchasing of that sauce, but also that of its competitor sauces.”

Kirsty Walker, head of marketing at AHDB Pork, attributed the success of the campaign to its partnership with retailers and pork processors and said she hoped the supply chain would continue working together to drive long-term recovery in the pork category.

“As an industry, we have a big challenge to inspire younger consumers to eat more pork and shore up the future domestic market for pork,” she said. “These results are just the beginning of a long-term plan to tackle this significant issue.”