Written by Nikki Richard – Creator of nikkirichard.com and Marketing Consultant

Bacon.

It’s more than just Ron Swanson’s favorite food and the most glorious delicacy on the planet.

It’s a $4 Billion industry.

As you know, bacon is not just some “breakfast meat”. Bacon can and will be used for just about everything imaginable (even a delicious marketing lesson).

In between the bacon scented candles, bacon-infused cocktails, bacon jams, jellies, candy, and even bacon aftershave- there’s sizzling marketing lesson to be learned that can be applied to any industry!

You see, the “Bacon Boom” was no accident.

Far from it.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t that long ago that bacon was actually a FAILING product.

Yeah seriously—what was America thinking?

In order to understand why this was happening, I’ll have to get you up to speed on bacon history.

It all started in the 1980’s when a new health and diet trend completely changed the American food industry.

You see, “scientific” reports had surfaced claiming that consuming animal fat was BAD for you. They scared the population into believing that eating yummy bacon could lead to severe health consequences–and more importantly–not looking good in neon green spandex.

These reports recommended substituting vegetable fats and sugar for animal fat–which we realized decades later was terrible advice. But Americans didn’t know any better in the 80’s and took the advice to heart.

They got RIDICULOUSLY fat as a result.

But let’s get back to bacon history.

When boneless-skinless chicken breasts hit the market—high fat meat sales started dropping like crazy. Bacon appeared to be doomed.

But Bacon isn’t your average food. It is the alpha food. When challenged, it doesn’t just “roll over” and accept its fate. When you hit bacon, it hits back. Even if takes two decades to do so.

As a response to the new diet trend, the National Pork Board decided to change the way they positioned pork in their marketing efforts.

At first, they kind of missed the mark.

They created a campaign called ‘Pork: The Other White Meat’, designed to position pork as a low calorie, low fat meat.

But since the Pork Board marketers focused on the leaner cuts of white pork, bacon sales continued to dwindle.

Flash forward to the early 90’s.

The  fast food market was offering low fat this and lean that, and bacon was still hurting. They realized that they were not going to be able to convince the fast food industry that bacon was “healthy”.

So they stopped trying.

Instead, they positioned bacon as a flavor enhancer. The ultimate “extra” ingredient.

With bacon’s low cost (and deliciousness) fast food chains were incentivized to put it on EVERYTHING. The first chain to do so was Hardee’s. The rest of the industry followed, but a new problem quickly sprung up. Due to the mess that bacon makes with all of its epic smoke and grease, restaurant chains were finding themselves in cleaning disaster mode all the time.

But the Pork Board wasn’t about to let a minor setback ruin their industry.

They spent wheelbarrows of cash researching a “clean bacon” solution.

And thus, pre-cooked bacon was born. The Pork Board then started lobbying restaurant chains to develop bacon-based menu items where bacon could be added as a condiment.

And that’s when every burger and sandwich in America instantly became amazing.

In 2000, The Pork Board came up with tagline “Bacon Makes It Better”. And just like that,  Bacon became a third condiment option following household staples like salt and pepper.

Since then, the subject of bacon has sizzled and caught fire (in the best possible way). It’s on T-Shirts. It’s the subject of countless internet memes. There are bacon festivals. There’s even a National Holiday.

Yes, this “meat candy” has taught us a very important marketing lesson.

And that lesson is the importance of positioning.

But forget bacon for a moment. What about your brand? Is your positioning working? Is it creating delicious sales in your marketplace?

If it isn’t, I’d like to help you.

It’s time that you introduced a bacon positioning strategy into your 2018 marketing arsenal.

Ready for things to start sizzling?

Get in contact with me today.