Beef Checkoff Program Receives International Attention

The success of the beef checkoff-funded “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner”®  campaign in driving beef demand has drawn national acclaim, but is also capturing the attention of international audiences. The campaign’s achievements made up one of the case studies featured recently at the International Meat Secretariat (IMS) Marketing and Communications Workshop held in Dublin, Ireland.

Jennifer Houston, a Tennessee beef producer who chairs the beef industry’s Joint Advertising Committee, found the international interest in “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” to be significant.

“As producers, we easily recognize the nationwide success of this campaign. But it is gratifying to know that its effectiveness is drawing attention from beyond our borders,” Houston said. 

Promotional efforts such as “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” are funded by America’s beef  producers through the national Beef Checkoff Program. “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” is coordinated on behalf of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and state beef councils by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA).  The NCBA serves as one of the Beef Board’s contractors for checkoff-funded programs.

Mark Thomas, vice president of Global Consumer Marketing for NCBA and a presenter at the IMS workshop, found the success of “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” to be the envy of many professionals in the global meat industry. Thomas called the “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” case study “one of the real highlights of the workshop.”

“Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” is now recognizable to 88 percent of American consumers.

“The music, the voice of Sam Elliot, and the tagline have actually become part of the American fabric. ‘Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner’ has been the vehicle through which Beef Checkoff Program dollars became a catalyst for consumer demand, and has been a key ingredient in an upward shift in beef demand that is nothing short of historic,”  Thomas said.

Thomas added that research efforts by the U.S. beef industry, also made possible by the Beef Checkoff Program, were also featured at the workshop for recent advancements in product development.

The workshop focused on the results of the Project 7 Report, which was originally funded by the Beef Checkoff Program in 1995. This report’s recommendations challenged the beef industry to be more aggressive in working with private industry to assist in product development, and to put value-added, convenient products into the consumer marketplace.

“We have major manufacturers that weren’t even in the beef business a few short years ago, that are now major players with branded beef products in the marketplace,” Thomas said, citing Hormel Foods, Tyson Foods, and Smithfield Foods as notable examples. “With checkoff funding, we have ‘awoken a sleeping giant’ by putting products in the marketplace that meet the ever-changing needs of consumers. That is a critical key in sustaining long-term demand growth for beef.”