reLAKSation 241. Callander McDowell
Should know better!: Birds Eye, part of the Unilever Group, have just launched a new TV advertising campaign which was seen on British ITV on Monday night. It’s aim is to promote their wild pacific salmon dishes but instead it resorts to the worst type of negative advertising. A major food company like Birds Eye should know better.
The advert looks as if it features one of the presenters from the BBC TV programme ‘Full on Food’ although it is likely that most viewers wouldn’t know him from Adam. His name is Richard Johnson and is a food and drink journalist and resident restaurant critic for Olive magazine.
The advert opens with a fishing boat out at sea and at first it would be easily forgiven if they thought it was the recent Young’s advertisement, but it cuts to Mr Johnson lifting a fish box holding a couple of salmon. He says:
We’re out here fishing for wild salmon.
One of the things I love is its colour but how does it get naturally pink?
It’s all down to its diet of shrimp and small crustacean.
Mr Johnson then picks up a beaker of shrimp.
Without this they would be grey
So how come salmon that isn’t wild is so pink?
The adverts images move from the fishing boat to a laboratory setting. Mr Johnson is now wearing a white lab coat.
Well, there’s a synthetic colourant that is sometimes added to the feed – Astaxanthin
Mr Johnson holds up a laboratory chemical bottle clearly labelled with the word astaxanthin.
There are even colour charts – I thought they were joking
Mr Johnson holds up a Roche colour fan and then looks at a larger colour chart on the wall.
He finishes by saying that:
So it looks like you can’t always judge a fish by its colour
The advert ends with images of Birds Eye products and a female voice saying:
We only use wild pacific salmon. No colourants. Five star food – Frozen.
Commercial reports suggest that Birds Eye are not doing so well, especially as British consumers are actively seeking chilled and fresh products rather than frozen. It is a shame that they need to resort to this type of advert to try to promote sales. It reeks of the same messages emanating from the environmental groups, which we know do not have such widespread consumer support. They are trying to boost sales by highlighting the use of fully legal ingredients but be presenting them in a negative way through the use of laboratory images. This is just wrong but could backfire on them because if consumers are deterred from eating farmed salmon, they are likely to stop eating all salmon.
As well as the colour issue, Birds Eye also imply that the farmed salmon they criticise and the wild that they catch are the same thing. They do state at the end that the fish they use are pacific salmon but the images they use tell a very different story.
Birds Eye is a food company and they know only too well of the damage that can be caused if consumers get the wrong message. Through their expensive advertising campaign, they are sowing the seeds of doubt, whether right or wrong amongst consumers. They should know better.