Launching a National Seafood Brand
What would you do after millions of gallons of oil spill into the very ocean from which most of the nation’s wild red snapper is harvested? Commercial fishermen across the Gulf of Mexico engaged Envolve Strategies to protect their reputation with American seafood lovers.
The Challenge
It was the largest marine oil spill in history, with devastating consequences for the watermen who made their living harvesting and selling seafood in the Gulf. The proactive Gulf Alliance fishermen had already conceived the revolutionary tagging system before BP’s historic oil disaster, but the environmental threat forced immediate action to get it launched.
Our job was to give life to a unique concept that would publicly display the complete credentials of a specific fish. Details such as exactly where in the Gulf of Mexico a fish was caught, who caught it, from what vessel, even confirmation of the type of fish — all aimed to restore consumer confidence in the safety of Gulf-caught wild seafood.
Our Approach
With safety and sustainability as pillars to the Gulf Wild brand, we set out to engineer a confident and trustworthy brand. Our mission-first “Seafood with Certainty” promise earned the confidence seafood consumers demanded after the catastrophic Gulf oil spill. We added valuable assurance with our consumer-facing Gulf Wild™ TransparenSea System™ – the online seafood tracking system that featured layers of consumer messaging and an impressively low bounce rate.
Envolve was the primary architect of the entire Gulf Wild™ brand and industry introduction — from initial naming exercises and prototypes of logo, gill tags and corporate ID, to messaging blueprints and brand development, all the way through multi-layered partnerships, media strategies and marketing strategies, many of which continue to power the brand today.
Our Results
Industry insiders called Gulf Wild® the most innovative seafood brand introduction in years. We captured more than 225 positive media hits from digital outlets, consumer newspapers, television and radio stations, magazines, and trade journals across the country in a two-year period. When combined with the satellite media tour we anchored in Galveston, TX, we achieved well over 16 million impressions in our sustained media campaign.
That media helped sales and operations leadership to lock in key relationships with national retailers, global distributors and essential marketing partners, including Publix, HEB grocers, Darden, Sysco, and many others. This engagement included six years of media, digital marketing, branding, food safety, sustainability, event marketing, crisis communications and partnership initiatives — and still some of our proudest work.
