“Be Inspired” inspires everyone!

“Pork. The other white meat.” only appealed to the consumer. But the Pork Board’s new tag line, Be Inspired, speaks to everyone -- the slaughterhouse worker, the Hormel VP of corporate communications ... Nobody’s left out.

Be inspired! the pork board said. And the Hormel suppliers in Bayard, Iowa were. No more settling for the humdrum everyday ways of killing like shackle hoists and stun bolt guns. They used metal poles and cement floors, they shocked and impaled. It’s all on video, though not one of the videos posted on the Feed your Creativity site the Pork Board set up on PorkBeInspireddotcom. You'll only find pork recipes there now. Maybe when they expand their video library?

Be Inspired! the pork board said, and the PR flak in the Hormel corporate communications department was. When the video of the abuses in the Bayard plant hit the news, he didn’t settle for the conventional spin or the little white lie. He said,

We found the images from the Iowa farm appalling … this is simply about treating animals humanely because it’s the right thing to do … Pork producers are the best ambassadors for animal welfare in the United States.

Slaughter 1,000 animals per hour and you’re the best ambassadors for animal welfare in the United States? He didn’t worry about people asking if he was on drugs when he said that, maybe the same drugs Hormel injects into their hogs. He was inspired. He came up with a statement on the dark side of truth and it ended up in the Hormel Corporate Responsibility report and probably earned him a reserved parking spot.

Be Inspired! the Pork Board said, and Temple Grandin was. Killing was too inefficient in most slaughterhouses. Animals inexplicably resisted entering. Struggling hogs slipped on the floor, holding up the line, causing delays, decreasing efficiency. So Temple Grandin invented a grooved tile to keep the hogs hoofs from slipping. Improving efficiency. Increasing the number of hogs slaughtered. Earning herself cash bonuses from the fast food companies and the coveted Proggy Award from PETA.

Be Inspired is all-inclusive. It speaks to everyone. No wonder the Pork Board changed their tag line.

Questions for the Pork Board's PR guy

The Pork Board changed their tag line to “Be Inspired,” and the Adweek reporter asked their PR guy why.

“We’re going toward a new target of people,” the PR guy said.

Here are a few of the questions the Adweek reporter didn’t ask the PR guy: It’s estimated 112 million pigs are slaughtered every year. Do these pigs have nervous systems? Do they feel pain? When your children ask you what tail docking is, what do you say? Can you look into their eyes when you say this? Does it ever strike you as arbitrary that you treat your dog like a family member but you confine similarly intelligent creatures in cages too small for them to around in and poke them with electric prods and and fire bolts into their brains? Did you know pigs are fun-loving creatures? Did you know they love life, and fear death, just like you? Do you like your job? Have you seen the video of the workers slamming the piglets to the ground until they die, except they’re not all dead, some are still moving around in the bloody pile? Do you ever reflect that you too have but a brief time among the living? Does this awareness make you question why you spend it justifying the slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals every year? A typical slaughterhouse kills about 1,000 hogs per hour. Do you comprehend how much death that is? Do the darkest hours of night ever make you tremble for what you do?

The AdWeek reporter doesn't ask the PR guy any of those questions. He asks why they changed their tag line. "We’re going toward a new target of people," the PR guy says.

New tag line for the National Pork Board

The National Pork Board has a new tagline. “Pork. The other white meat” is gone. The new line: “Pork. Be Inspired.” Adweek Magazine has the scoop. Now anyone who’s ever read an article about pork products knows you don’t have to read far to find a play on words. Sure, enough, Adweek can’t even wait for the article to begin. They give us the first one in the title. “The other white meat finally cedes its place in the pen." Then another in the subhead. “The national pork board hoofed out a new tagline.” People can be so somber and earnest about so many things, but nothing brings out a spirit of levity like the topic of animal slaughter. You can almost see the wide grins forming in the Adweek newsroom when they got assigned to a story on the pork tag line change. So many puns, so little article space. “Plenty of restaurants and grocery stores fattened up the margins.” Hee hee. The same playful spirit inspired the people doing the ads for the new “Be inspired” campaign. “To all a good bite,” the headline says. You get it? To all a good night. Famous line. Bite rhymes with night. Funny stuff. Some of us might not think puns and rhymes and light-hearted whimsy go with stun bolting the brains and slashing the throats of living, pain-feeling creatures, but what do we know?