Love Seafood campaign to encourage consumers to ‘Bring on Better Living’

Informed by market research, Seafish has launched the theme for the second year of its long-term consumer marketing initiative, Love Seafood.

Love Seafood celebrates its first birthday on 1 October. Seafish, the public body that supports the UK seafood industry, which is driving this nationwide consumer marketing initiative, has now announced the theme for the brand’s second year.

From October onwards, Love Seafood will encourage consumers across the UK to ‘Bring on Better Living’, showcasing how eating seafood can fuel the nation to live better. Marketing activity will focus on reaching target audiences when they’re planning or buying their next meal, and highlight why seafood is a great choice.

The new direction for the brand has been informed by consumer research carried out by independent market research agency Mustard. This summer, it created a pop-up online community of individuals from Love Seafood’s target audiences. Research participants were asked about their perceptions and understanding of seafood, their behaviour when purchasing, cooking and eating seafood, and their preferences for species, flavours and dining occasions. They were also asked to share their thoughts on Love Seafood’s past campaigns.

The research concluded that it’s important to play on the positives when promoting seafood, which is seen by consumers as tasty, fresh, light and healthy. It also found that most people are looking for convenience and value when dining at home, but conversely want indulgence and discovery when dining out.

Inspired by this, Love Seafood’s forthcoming year of campaigns will champion the variety of benefits that seafood offers, making it the perfect protein for all occasions. Bring on Better Living will also tap into the ever-changing eating behaviours of Love Seafood’s target audiences. It will offer help with meal planning at the start of a week, provide last- minute midweek options, and suggest treat dishes for the weekends.

Greg Smith, head of marketing at Seafish, said: “We’ve worked closely with insight from consumer research to inform the year two focus for Love Seafood, as we look to build on the strong foundations laid down so far. We’re confident that our new ‘Bring on Better Living’ theme and strapline will land well, helping to embed the Love Seafood message with those we’re targeting.

“We invest in qualitative research to stay close to consumers – and understand how best to play our part in reversing the decline in seafood consumption across the UK. Seafood is a delicious healthy protein, so it’s great to see that consumers are responsive to these positive messages. We’re taking this onboard alongside findings on how to approach consumers for different dining situations, which will all go towards informing our upcoming campaign plans.

“Love Seafood has been built as a 20-year initiative, because changing consumer hearts and minds takes time. We rely on support from across the incredible seafood industry,to help spread the Love Seafood message across the nation. To date, we’ve worked with some incredibly inspirational people – and have captured their amazing stories. We’re really grateful to all the seafood businesses that have helped make the first year of Love Seafood a success. We’ll have more partnership opportunities going forward, so I’d encourage anyone who’d like to support the mission to get in touch.”

Further information about Love Seafood is available on the Seafish website.

Businesses interested in finding out more or working with Love Seafood can get in touch with the team behind the brand by emailing: loveseafood@seafish.co.uk

This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.30 here.