Public Relations, Communications, & Learnings
Advertising
2024 marked the third full year for our ‘Good for ME, Good for MB’ multimedia campaign which aims to strengthen Manitobans’ trust in the province’s hog sector. This year’s campaign continued to span rural and urban communities, but more focus was placed on the City of Winnipeg. Awareness tactics included 11 ultra tail bus backs, seasonal superboards and cinema advertising that ran from May to August in select theatres – a new addition for 2024. Other tactics drove audiences to our Sustainability Focus web pages. These included comprehensive digital marketing campaigns that targeted key audiences and geographic areas, print ads in specialty publications, banner ads in eight strategically chosen rural community papers, and advertorials in the Winnipeg Free Press. Animal care and environment messages were given more weight in 2024 over economy, food and social contributions. Our year-round efforts garnered 11.86M ad impressions, 64.4K ad clicks, 40.4K total website users, and a 19.31% engagement rate.
Our year-round efforts garnered:
Chop Talk
In 2024, Manitoba Pork launched a podcast for producers and sector stakeholders, while also building on the Chop Talk brand. The Chop Talk podcast featured 25 episodes, hosted by Joey Dearborn, Rhea Teranishi, Danielle Dolyniuk, and Tia Landry, focused on issues that relate back to the work producers do on farm. The Chop Talk e-newsletter underwent a design transformation as well to match the new podcast branding and is released biweekly on opposite weeks of the podcast. Between both channels, producers received a new piece of communications from Manitoba Pork almost every week.
Website
Manitoba Pork, together with onPoint, worked throughout 2024 on the redevelopment of manitobapork.com, a trusted source of information for both producers and industry. The new website will be slimmed down from the number of pages on the previous website, focusing on the information that has seen the highest amount of traffic. Thanks to funding from the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, $25,000 of the cost has been covered.
PORK PROUD Ambassador Program
Manitoba Pork launched the PORK PROUD Ambassador Program in 2024 (https://www.manitobapork.com/programs-services/pork-proud-ambassador-program), specifically for farmers and industry experts who want to tell their story. The program offers hands-on training to help ambassadors build skills in effectively communicating what they do and what the sector offers with the average consumer. This year, nine individuals partook in ‘Communicate with Confidence’ training. Two ambassadors have since used their training at Manitoba Pork supported community engagement events.
Community Engagement
Manitoba Pork is heavily invested in community engagement and outreach through sponsorships, events, donations, and our Pork on a Bun program. This year we supported over 80 charities, hospital foundations, community groups and not-for-profit organizations through financial and in-kind donations for their fundraising or community events. We engaged with thousands of patrons at sponsored events including the Children’s Hospital Foundation’s Teddy Bears’ Picnic, Steinbach’s Summer in the City, and Orange Shirt Day at Siloam Mission.
Harvest Manitoba
This year marked the second year of our three-year commitment to Harvest Manitoba to provide freezers and ground pork to food banks across the province. The six food banks that benefitted this year are in Ashern, Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation, Elie, and in Winnipeg communities in St Vital, St James, and the North End. Since program launch, more than 10,000 pounds of ground pork has filled the freezers of the participating food banks.
Pork Sports
In 2024, Manitoba Pork continued its support of local sports organizations by partnering with the Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL), Curl Manitoba and the Winnipeg Sea Bears to help strengthen public trust. Partnership benefits provided us with opportunities for communicating key messages and engaging with dedicated fans in Winnipeg and over a dozen rural communities including Steinbach, Winkler, Niverville and Neepawa.
Highlights in 2024 included ads on the MJHL’s Digital Sign Network, various logo recognition opportunities, website and mobile app banner ads, and the Manitoba Peak Performer of the Month Award. Our long-standing partnership with the curling community also continued to thrive with Curl Manitoba seeing yet another increase in membership this past season. Among other benefits, our logo was prominently featured at the Scotties Women’s and Viterra Men’s Provincial Championships, we had banner ads running in the association’s e-newsletter, on their website and social media platforms, and all youth curlers received a free t-shirt bearing the slogan, ‘Hoggin’ the fun!’.
2024 was the first time we partnered with the Winnipeg Sea Bears – an exciting and engaging experience both on and off the court. Manitoba Pork sponsored the sold-out June 1 game and executed an activation at two other games throughout the season, each time running short of squishy pigs, special in-house made badges, recipes books, spice packs and more. We received significant logo recognition throughout the season, along with animated bacon-themed advertising on the jumbotron, getting our brand in front of a league-wide attendance record of 86,275 fans from May-August.
Agriculture Education
Manitoba Pork staff are invested in increasing agriculture literacy in Manitoba through the development of resources, events, and support of agriculture education groups.
Agriculture in the Classroom - Manitoba
In early 2024, we announced a three-year commitment to Agriculture in the Classroom-Manitoba at the Cultivator level of $25,000 per year. We provided in-kind support for the development of a new agriculture education resource, and by volunteering at Amazing Agriculture Adventure and for Canadian Agriculture Literacy Month.
Academic Prizes
In keeping with our commitment to ag education, Manitoba Pork continued to provide $5,000 in scholarship funds to the University of Manitoba Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences for two academic prizes and one bursary and $1,000 to 4-H Manitoba for their “Leaders of Tomorrow” scholarship. We also supported the endeavours of students enrolled in the culinary arts program at Red River Polytech and the Manitoba Institute of Culinary Arts at Assiniboine College where students compete in a pork cook-off for bragging rights and prize money. The prize money for Assiniboine College was increased in 2024 to better support students’ educational journey in this field.
Consumer Education
The Ulimate Canadian Pork Burger
To help enhance growth opportunities at retail and foodservice, 2024 saw the continued collaboration between Canada Pork and the western prairie provinces on regional projects that aided the promotion of Verified Canadian Pork™. Together, we supported the Ultimate Canadian Pork Burger demand building program by working with Federated Co-operatives Limited, creating a new video in partnership with a top Canadian chef, and placing a trade ad and advertorial in Western Restaurant News. We promoted the Sizzling Pork Stir Fry demand building program as well with a feature in the same publication.
Pork - A Powerhouse of Nutrition
Lastly, with healthy and affordable eating remaining top of mind for consumers across Canada, we developed nutrition creatives to support the overarching slogan, Pork – A Powerhouse of Nutrition. The messages that Pork Provides Protein, Pork Fuels Performance, Pork Supports Play and Pork Boosts Mood were applied to individual recipe cards for release in early 2025. Pork Provides Protein and Pork Fuels Performance creatives were also used for the advertising benefits we receive through our sponsorship agreements with Curl Manitoba and the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.
All About Ground Pork
For consumers here at home, we developed a new recipe booklet, All About Ground Pork to elevate the culinary prowess of ground pork and highlight its nutritional value and affordability. It also served as a cooking resource for low-income individuals and families that benefited from our Fill the Freezer initiative with Harvest Manitoba. In late summer, we created a temperature resource that promoted cooking lean pork cuts to a hint of pink, helping to ensure that consumers have a sensational eating experience.
This video carousel includes our Produced on the Prairies stories from the 35th season, as well as our featured recipes.
Great Tastes of Manitoba
For the 35th consecutive year, Manitoba Pork participated in Great Tastes of Manitoba (GTOM) with two shows and two human-interest stories. Two recipes from each show aired on broadcast television and the third recipe was only available digitally. The major shifts in how TV is consumed and a growing desire to target younger consumers led to the development of a comprehensive strategy to move Manitoba’s most watched cooking show online, with all seven commodity partners supporting the change. Nine of GTOM’s top 20 most watched YouTube videos continued to belong to pork.
Make it Pork! Meal Kits
Our Make it Pork! Meal Kit (https://www.manitobapork.com/teacher) continues to be a popular curriculum-linked resource for foods and nutrition classrooms in Manitoba. This year, the kits were used by 570 middle and high school students, and we expanded capacity to offer the resource to rural schools.
Pork! The One You Love
Manitoba Pork continues to publish its highly successful consumer e-newsletter, Pork! The One You Love, on a quarterly basis, highlighting recipes, cooking tips, and producer stories, reaching over 5,400 subscribers.
Labour and Training
Every year, Manitoba Pork takes steps to help swine operations improve employee retention and promote careers in the pork sector. In 2024, we continued to work with Assiniboine College to promote their swine production programing – Swine Production Foundations, Advanced Swine Production and Swine Production Leadership – to encourage those just starting or already working in the sector to gain a better understanding of swine production and develop their skills.
We also created a new career video that was released in November in conjunction with Career Month. The video, Careers in Pork – A Cut Above highlights the diverse opportunities the hog sector offers and the rewarding careers that fuel the global demand for nutrient-rich, flavourful pork. It was shared with industry partners and launched on YouTube and social media. Toward the end of 2024, we developed a tabletop trivia game that will be used at future career events aimed at junior high and high school students to increase awareness and cultivate curiosity about the hog sector.
Throughout the year, CPR/First Aid training and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) continued to be offered in cooperation with ACC. 2024 was a record year for training, with 404 employees completing the CPR/First Aid training and 298 employees completing the H2S course. HR-related training was delivered in person by Emerald Ten Inc. with one half-day session taking place at the end of November for 16 barn staff from eight different hog operations.
Meat Cutting Education
At the end of September, Manitoba Pork worked with Canada Pork to deliver meat cutting education sessions to culinary students at Red River Polytech in Winnipeg and students enrolled in the Food Processing program at Assiniboine College in Brandon. During the sessions, students received and overview of the Canadian pork story and watched an engaging pork merchandising demonstration (meat cutting) by an experienced butcher which served to improve their knowledge, awareness and perceptions of Canadian pork.
Social Media
Manitoba Pork remained active on Facebook and Instagram sharing recipes, cooking tips, and photos from our community outreach and agriculture education efforts. We also used our social media handles to promote new initiatives, contests, videos, and our quarterly consumer e-newsletter. By year’s end, our social media accounts had grown to 5,444 Facebook and 1,789 Instagram followers.