Retailers Leverage National Seafood Month
The Global Seafood Alliance (GSA) has released results from its "Choose Seafood with Standards" marketing campaign, which coincided with National Seafood Month in October 2023, and leveraged a slew of retailer partners.
This was GSA’s second consumer-facing campaign focused on building awareness of the Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification program and product label as well as driving sales of BAP-certified seafood, according to a media release. BAP is a global nonprofit that certifies aquaculture seafood produced safely, responsibly and ethically.
Campaign support included social media activity with targeted influencer engagement, the creation and promotion of new recipes on BAP's consumer website and national and regional consumer media outreach. The GSA says public relations outreach resulted in consistent media mentions for BAP, including articles in HuffPost, Forbes, Tasting Table and The Daily Meal, a CBS Austin broadcast segment with dietitian Mia Syn, and multiple posts from food bloggers.
Ten retail and foodservice partners signed on for this campaign, including Aldi, Giant Eagle, Green Chef (a meal kit delivery service), H-E-B, Lidl, Meijer, Wakefern Food Corp. (the supermarket cooperative that includes the ShopRite banner) and WinCo Foods.
Partners participated by working with paid campaign influencers, collaborating with GSA on PR opportunities, creating their own social content about BAP, posting and sharing BAP content and recipes on social media and promoting BAP on their websites, advertisements, in-store signage and in direct-to-consumer packages.
A sample of retailer-specific activity in October includes:
- Giant Eagle posted an herb roasted salmon recipe on its website with an accompanying tutorial video shared to the retailer’s Instagram.
- Lidl dedicated a full page of its monthly magazine, The Dish, in October to promote a salmon chowder recipe and the BAP label as well as a 20% off fresh seafood discount to myLidl loyalty members.
- ShopRite posted a recipe for a cheesy baked shrimp dip recipe (that uses BAP-certified Wholesome Pantry shrimp) on its social media channels, including its Instagram story with a link to see the full recipe on the retailer’s website.
Campaign Results
GSA says the campaign support and tactics resulted in 775 media mentions of BAP from Sept. 1 through the end of 2023 that reached more than 2 billion people. For its 2023 campaign, PR efforts were spread throughout the entire year instead of just during this focused promotional period, per the release.
The social media campaign had a reach of 1.8 million people and 720,000 engagements. This is a significant increase from the 1 million reached and 170,000 engagements from GSA’s 2022 Choose Seafood with Standards campaign. The six influencer posts also garnered 1.3 million impressions and 692,000 engagements.
GSA says it plans to build on this momentum in 2024 and will be conducting a digital campaign during Lent as well as other promotions throughout the year. The promotion will feature new recipes now available on BAP's consumer-facing website.