Beef Needs a Rebrand
I was in the Dairy Building at the Minnesota State Fair this weekend, and all any of us could smell was meat. Right at the tail end of the line for ice cream was the beef booth, which looked straight out of the late ’80s. In a firm, all caps font it read, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.”
What does that phrase make you picture? To me, it sounds 100% masculine, like a workaday dad demanding that he come home to rare-cooked burger. The font and rhythm of it make me picture someone pounding their fist on the table, like a gavel. This firm, manly-man feel is definitely dated, especially considering the context of our increasingly ethical eating habits.
A bit of background – The “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” branding was created by the Leo Burnett Company in 1992. It was funded by The Beef Checkoff, an organization that collects money from agriculture producers and uses it for research and marketing. (“Got Milk?” is the product of the same type of checkoff organization.)
Seeing how eating habits have changed tremendously in the past 20 years, why hasn’t beef’s marketing worked harder to recontextualize it? Let’s think about what that context would be.
Hating on beef
Beef has gotten a lot of bad PR that this branding doesn’t really acknowledge. Films like Food, Inc. have pointed fingers at the cattle industry for causing everything from increased salmonella to excess pollution, not to mention plenty of heart disease.
Still loving beef
Nonetheless, beef has managed to successfully enter today’s foodie industry. Nostalgic eating is hot right now, and American food has gotten all kinds of gourmet makeovers. For those who want to eat for the earth, free-range cattle let them enjoy beefy dishes with less guilt.
But you knew all that, right?
So why doesn’t beef’s branding acknowledge any of this? I took a look at some of Beef Checkoff’s websites, and the one that gets closest is Explorebeef.org, which aims to connect the industry back to family farms. While this connection might be somewhat of a stretch, the layout and language of the site feels slightly more modern.
The problem with “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” might be a problem with the way checkoff organizations work. Old checkoff marketing was mostly about coming up with a clever slogan that would stick in people’s heads. That just doesn’t cut it in the days of research and Internet-savvy customers. To connect with them, brands have to modernize and show that they are guided by their own values, and based on action. That’s hard to do when you’re speaking for tons of disparate producers.
Despite that conundrum, checkoff programs do have a utility, especially when it comes to research. Better branding for beef might not be able to convince people that the beef industry is helping society, but it could at least update to be useful to today’s consumer. How would you rebrand beef?