reLAKSation 161.
A
great success:
Figures released from last year’s National Seafood Week, which appeared in
IntraFish, indicate that 53% of those involved in the promotion said that they
believe that it helped promote seafood. However, a surprising 13% were not sure
what benefits the campaign brought. We, at Callander McDowell, can sympathise
with this view, because having closely watched the last three campaigns,
including the one that has just ended, we can only conclude that the promotion
lacks any real substance.
Those participating in National Seafood Week include fish and chip shops, restaurants and independent retail fishmongers. However the greatest potential interface for the public to come into contact with this promotion is through the major supermarkets. Fishupdate.com report that those supermarkets organising events during the week include Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Somerfield, Safeway, Waitrose, Iceland. In addition, the official website (www.seafoodweek.co.uk) reports that the discount chain Lidl is also participating in the promotion.
Although all the major supermarkets were supposed to participate in this promotion, we, at Callander McDowell, found little evidence to suggest that they were. We believe that most British shoppers would have remained blissfully ignorant of the promotion at all. Certainly there was no indication of the promotion in any of the Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Safeway, Iceland, Lidl or Waitrose stores that we visited during the week. It was only in Somerfield and Marks & Spencer stores that it was evident that it was National Seafood Week. Somerfield stores displayed a small shelf label and a holder of promotional leaflets in which shoppers were encouraged to spend £5 on chilled fish for which they would receive a voucher for two nights for the price of one at a selection of 150 UK hotels.
Some Marks & Spencer stores also displayed a shelf label highlighting a £1 discount on scallops. Packs of scallops, tuna and seabass incorporated a National Seafood Week recipe leaflet.
Asda, who were not included in the Seafish press release did mention the promotion in their magazine, but only on the last page and whilst they said that there would be cookery demonstrations across the country, they did not say if any would be taking place in their own stores.
The National Seafood Week website listed a whole range of events taking place throughout the UK including some at British supermarkets. Although, Callander McDowell could not find anything locally, we did note that Morrisons were hosting some cookery demonstrations at selected Yorkshire and Humberside stores. We made the effort to visit one of these and found that they were organised by the Humber Seafood Group, who were promoting Coley, Red Fish, Greenland Halibut, Haddock and Crab. They had set up a small stand in one of the selected stores so that they could demonstrate various alternative recipes with an oriental theme. Unfortunately, at the time of our visit, the chef was stood twiddling his thumbs in the absence of any interested customers. A second visit later in the day produced the same observation. Morrisons shoppers who missed this 4 hour demonstration would have been unaware of National Seafood Week at all.
The
IntraFish newspaper reports that according to Howard Thomas, promotions manager
at Seafish, National Seafood Week is one of the biggest, most exciting and
inclusive national events of the year. Unfortunately, we cannot agree. The
evidence in store suggests that the week long promotion is nothing but a damp
squib. Last year’s campaign resulted in over 200 articles in the media
equating to an advertising value of £1.2 million. This is all well and good but
unless consumers go out and buy the fish, there is little point to this campaign. We
found little incentive for customers to do so. The problem with campaigns like
the National Seafood Week is that their success is measured by awareness rather
than whether the public have actually bought into the promotional message. As a
comparison, the US restaurant chain Legal Seafoods have recently announced that
as a direct response to their campaign to promote the consumption of Pacific
salmon, sales have risen 300%. This is a clear measure that their campaign has
been a success.
The
problem with National Seafood Week is that it tries to be too wide-ranging and
it therefore fails, especially when most consumers appear unwilling to listen to
the message. It is worth remembering that past EU Fisheries Minister Emma Bonino
tried to persuade European consumers to try alternative species without any
success. Seafish have encountered the same problems in that consumers are
reluctant to move away from their traditional species and sticking a couple of
posters up in a fishmongers provides little encouragement to do so. We believe
that Seafish should try to focus on specific market sectors rather than take
their wide ranging approach.
IntraFish
recently reported fish was not eaten much in Chile and that in an effort to
increase consumption, Chilean children were being targeted. The idea is to
develop products that children like to eat and these will be offered at their
schools. We, at Callander McDowell firmly believe that this is a way to
encourage a greater consumption of fish, especially in years to come.
In
the UK, we acknowledge that Seafish do operate an education programme, but
surely stepping this up would be a better use of limited resources.
Interestingly, the Sunday Mirror reported recently that sales of a fish oil that
claims to boost children’s brainpower has soared. Sales of omega 3 supplements
at Tesco have quadrupled over the past year. Surely, Seafish could capitalise on
this growing demand and encourage children that the real thing is much better
than a supplement. Here is a potential market which the fishing industry is
clearly failing to exploit. Seafish is ideally placed to take the omega 3
message to both children and parents and show them that some species of fish are
rich in these oils, providing both a boost to the brain as well as a more
balanced diet. At the same time, omega 3 rich fish should be incorporated into
the types of products children eat. It cannot be that difficult to enhance the
omega 3 content of fish fingers and burgers.
Meanwhile,
Seafish has been busy giving away £600 million worth of holiday vouchers
through fishmongers and fish friers as part of the current campaign!!
Another
great success:
According to Scottish Quality Salmon, 64% of medium to heavy consumers of fish,
equating to 3.2 million people, saw the recent salmon farming advertisements in
British newspapers. In total, 25.3
million adults saw the campaign an estimated 2.4 times which represents a
massive 60.8 million exposures to their message.
These
adverts were the first phase of a two year £3 million campaign intended to
counter the negative messages issued by those who want to discredit the salmon
farming industry. In addition, SQS wanted to reaffirm the advice given by the
Food Standards Agency that oil rich fish, such as Scottish salmon, is a healthy
choice.
With
such massive exposure, sales of Scottish salmon must have soared over the period
of the campaign as consumers react to the positive message in the adverts.
Unfortunately, this does not appear to have been the case, especially at a time,
when the European Commission are still considering how best to protect Scottish
producers.
Whilst
Scottish Quality Salmon claim to have created 60 million exposures to their
message, the reality is that they are only potential exposures based on the
number of readers for each newspaper multiplied by the publication of each
advertisement. There is absolutely no guarantee that any reader actually saw the
advert at all, let alone assimilated its message. In a straw poll of known
salmon consumers who also read the various newspapers in which the adverts
appeared, not one was able to confirm that they had seen the advert. In our own
case, we, at Callander McDowell knew that the adverts were being published due
to a report in IntraFish and
therefore specifically watched out for them. We acknowledge that we didn’t buy
every paper on every day, but we only saw the advert twice. This is below the
estimated exposure and yet we were looking for them.
Advertising
agencies tend to base the success of any campaign by how much awareness of the
product or message has increased. We know lots of people who are aware of Rolls
Royce cars, but it doesn’t mean that anyone will go out and buy one. Exposing
25.3 million adults to the advert does not mean that they will go out and buy
Scottish salmon any more than they would have done before the adverts appeared.
Sadly, this massive exposure is unlikely to help improve the situation for
Scottish farmers, anymore than safeguards will do.