With demand for fresh salmon soaring, direct-to-consumer brand Secret Island Salmon needed a way to increase awareness as it expanded its product line and began entering retail stores for the first time. The challenge the marketing department set itself was to determine how to add an edge without going overboard.
The company found that using wordplay was a way to position the brand as fun while also helping to control the narrative. An “F-word” campaign was launched across owned media in September, with slogans such as “Fuck you,” “These motherfuckers are raising legendary salmon,” and “Happy shit is healthy shit.” The slogan “*ing” aims to raise discussion and awareness about how the farmed salmon industry is raising fish in a healthy and sustainable way. Paid search and social ads will be added early next year.
Daniel del Coro, head of U.S. business development, said brand awareness has increased since the initiative’s inception, while direct-to-consumer, earned media and social media audiences have “grown exponentially. ”
“We had to evaluate the risk of introducing something as aggressive and fun as this, and we had to bet on our brand positioning on this, so we took the time to develop it,” Del Coro said. “We spent the better part of his two to three months brainstorming and researching what other brands were doing similar to this and what our target audience would be and their response. did.”
healthy market
Secret Island Salmon is the U.S. division of a leading supplier of farmed salmon from Chile, based in Portland, Maine. Salmon’s Austral. Naturally, the company wants to capture a larger share of U.S. salmon sales. As the best-selling seafood product in the United States, sales of fresh salmon reached a whopping $666 million in the first three quarters of 2023, according to Circana and 210 Analytics.
Global demand for salmon is rapidly increasing due to increasing health consciousness around the world, the popularity of seafood-based diets, and rising disposable incomes. By Astute Analytica. With this in mind, after two years of online-only sales, Secret Island Salmon will be selling sustainably farmed salmon fillets, bacon and burgers at Natural Products Expo East in Philadelphia in late September. , introduced a new line of hot dogs to retailers.
To support the launch, Del Coro was looking for a marketing message that would engage not only retailers but also Gen Z and Millennial customers in the discussion and raise awareness about farmed salmon and the brand. Ta. A few years ago, the industry received negative publicity for reasons such as high rates of antibiotic use.
“Many of the questions and concerns about farmed salmon are based on datasets or half-truths or myths about when farming started in the ’70s and ’80s,” Del Coro said. “So many things have changed, and a lot of brands haven’t said to consumers, ‘Let’s keep them informed.’ For our brand, it’s about giving them the right information and ensuring that wild-caught salmon This is an opportunity to help people make an educated choice about whether they prefer to eat salmon, farmed salmon, or both.”
salmon man
The challenge was to break through and capture the attention of advertising-weary consumers. On the other hand, Del Coro and the Pulp + Wire marketing team, based in Portland, Maine, knew that too much edginess could backfire. So far, that has not proven to be the case, and del Coro reported that consumer and retail purchaser responses to the campaign have been overwhelmingly positive.
“I’ve never been told, ‘I’m offended,’ or ‘This is not your role,'” he said.
After seeing a positive response at Natural Products Expo East and Seafood Trade Show this fall, Secret Island Salmon is expanding its comprehensive digital and social media consumption across TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. campaign has started. Website Content.
Interactions on the brand’s social media accounts have doubled, if not more, according to the executive. In particular, TikTok was more popular than he expected. Although he’s “out of his comfort zone,” Del Coro has appeared in a series of entertaining and informative videos as TikTok’s “Salmon Man.”
The company is currently pre-testing paid advertising on several platforms ahead of rolling out a broader campaign early next year. Del Coro expects TikTok to help once the product line becomes widely available in retail stores in early 2024.
“Gen Z is now using TikTok more than Google to research and buy products,” he noted.
