A pre-Valentine’s Day Angus Reid poll commissioned by Canadians’ principal source of bacon aims to hitch the company’s new product to consumers’ more basic instincts.
The “For The Love of Bacon” survey, conducted Dec. 1-2, on behalf of Maple Leaf Foods using 1,006 of the company’s “Angus Reid Forum” online panelists, states 43 per cent of respondents, when asked to choose between bacon and sex, chose the former.
Regionally, respondents choosing bacon over sex reached 50 per cent in British Columbia, compared to 37 per cent from Quebec.
“We wanted to probe how deeply rooted Canadians’ passion for bacon is — and the For the Love of Bacon survey sure opened our eyes,” Maple Leaf marketing vice-president Adam Grogan said in a release Wednesday.
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For example, when asked if they were “good lovers,” 82 per cent of respondents who said they love bacon, also said they are good lovers. Asked if they are romantic, 81 per cent of those who said they love bacon also agreed they are romantic.
Regionally, however, 23 per cent of respondents from Manitoba and Saskatchewan wondered if “my partner loves bacon more than me.”
More generally, the survey found 73 per cent of respondents overall claim to “love” bacon, and that 18 per cent of Canadian men agreed that “some days, they just can’t survive without bacon.”
Asked to rank various aromas by preference, 23 per cent of men ranked bacon as No. 1, according to Toronto-based Maple Leaf, which bills itself as Canada’s market leader in the bacon category.
“Much more gratifying”
The survey’s results are statistically weighted according to Statistics Canada census data on education, age, gender and region to ensure representative samples, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 per cent, Angus Reid said.
The poll, commissioned as Maple Leaf continues its rollout of its Maple Leaf Reclosable Bacon, is part of a wider marketing strategy for the product including TV spots, web promotions and videos with similar overtones, developed by marketing agency John St.
Maple Leaf is not the first, nor likely the last, to follow this particular theme in a bid to promote consumption of pork products.
Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, during a speech last week to representatives of that country’s hog industry, said she “didn’t know that eating pork improved sexual activity.”
Fernandez de Kirchner was quoted Jan. 27 by the Associated Press news agency as saying it’s “much more gratifying to eat some grilled pork than to take Viagra” and cracking a joke that “it was all good” after she had dined on pork with her husband, former Argentinean president Nestor Kirchner.
“I think they might be right,” AP quoted her as saying.
