reLAKSation Callander McDowell
What we saw: Seafood Fortnight is over and we are yet to hear whether the reality lived up to the promotional hype. We are in no doubt that Seafood Fortnight will be deemed, like its predecessor, Seafood Week, to have been a great success. Sadly, our observations paint a slightly different picture, although this year we saw some encouraging signs that at least one supermarket has tried to bring the promotion to a wider audience.
The Seafood Fortnight website advised that:
“Supermarkets throughout the UK will be celebrating Seafood Week 2008 with a variety of events and promotions. Visit your local supermarket to find out what they are doing for Seafood Week 2008.”
We at Callander McDowell followed this advice and visited not just our local supermarket, but plenty of others too. This is what we saw. Click on the links for each of the supermarket chains:
We appreciate that it is difficult to gauge the success of this promotion because the aim is seemingly to increase awareness of the benefits of eating fish and seafood. However, we at Callander McDowell, believe that it represents a missed opportunity to bring fish and seafood to those consumers who are usually unwilling to eat them. This promotion will do little to do that since most of the promotional material is sited around the chilled fish section or the fresh fish counter and the reality is that those consumers who never eat fish and seafood are unlikely to ever visit these areas and thus will never see the promotional material. The only people who will see the promotion are those who already buy fish and presumably (or hopefully) most will already understand the benefits of eating fish and seafood.
This year, Morrison’s extended the reach of their promotion of Seafood Fortnight by placing promotional material around the entry gates to every store. This meant that potential consumers had to pass through the material to gain entry to the store. (Whether they registered the promotional message is another question).
The ‘2-a week’ message has been the main theme of these seafood promotions for the last couple of years. There is no doubt that consumers would benefit from eating two portions of fish a week but sometimes this sort of message can be seen as a form of preaching which can be off-putting. Perhaps a simpler message would be that fish and seafood is just good to eat.
Regular readers will know that our usual focus is towards the supermarkets but there is more to Seafood Fortnight than that covered by the large retailers. The Seafood Fortnight website lists promotions by geographic location so this year we took some time out from our supermarket visits to check out what was going on elsewhere.
One of the independent fishmongers listed on the Seafood Fortnight website was J T Livesey of Chorley. Their entry on the website stated “We plan to promote the superb quality and range of fish and shellfish that we sell. Introduce customers to new varieties and highlight the benefits of seafood. Give advice on how to cook, with free recipe cards also”. However, when we called at the shop during the second week of the promotion, there was no visible mention of Seafood Fortnight at all. In fact, it looked just like any fishmongers would be expected to look during any ordinary week, not at the height of a major annual promotion.
Our second visit was to the Bulls Head at Wilmslow in Cheshire. According to their entry on the Seafood Fortnight website they were to offer a fantastic range of seafood. They also intended to help the Royal National Lifeboat Association with a guess the name of the gold fish competition. The most notable aspect of this visit was that they displayed a huge billboard at the roadside advertising Seafood Fortnight. It was only a shame it was on a quiet road and not at the entrance to a major supermarket.
Finally, SeaFish, the organisers of the Seafood Fortnight promotion, seemed to have been trying to ‘think outside their usual box’ with ‘2 a week’ advertising on Facebook. This is a definite change of tack in an attempt to attract the new internet generation. At least it’s something different!!!!
