As part of its 2014 12 Days of Christmas Holiday Giveaway Manitoba Pork awarded 12 fresh holiday pork packs valued at approximately $100 each.

Susan Riese, the Manager of Consumer Marketing and Community Relations Programmes with Manitoba Pork, notes the prize packages included a variety of items including pork loin, pork ribs, tenderloin and bacon.

Susan Riese-Manitoba Pork:

Multiple prongs to this contest.

It's the second time that we've run it and one of the things that we wanted to do was encourage consumers to think about pork as a great alternative or even in addition to the sort of traditional turkey focused holiday feast, so just reminding them that there are options out there.

As well as it was a way for us to engage with consumers on Facebook and Twitter which is becoming more and more popular all the time as well.

Any time we do any kind of contest, especially if we include digital advertising, whether that's magazines on line or newspaper on line ads we see quite a huge increase in web site traffic, sometimes to the point of doubling or more the visits to ManitobaPork.com.

In some ways that's to be expected because with on line ads it's as easy as a click to get to the page that you want.

We're making it a lot easier for people to engage with us and I think that ultimately results in more traffic to the site, especially when we're having a contest that we're running.

Ms Riese says this year's promotion attracted about 720 unique entries mostly from Winnipeg because winners were required to pick up their prizes at the Manitoba Pork office but she says there were entries received from rural areas as well.