BBRSDA Pilot Branding Project

Alaska’s Bristol Bay fish harvesters are testing the marketing waters of upscale Boulder, Colorado with a branding pilot project aimed at people who value sustainable food choices and want to know where their food really comes from.

To that end, the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, which represents the drift gillnet fleet that harvests the Bay’s famed sockeye salmon, has gone live with a colorful new website promoting the salmon, the region, and the fishermen, with links to 10 distributors and 11 processors of Bristol Bay salmon.

The website, www.bristolbaysockeye.com, designed by Anchorage public relations firm Rising Tide, features photos and videos of Bristol Bay, and recipes with photos for wild Alaska salmon, plus photos and profiles of five Bristol Bay harvesters from Washington State and Alaska. They are Pete Andrew, Dillingham, Alaska; Casey Coupchiak, Soldotna, Alaska; Fran Kaul, Washington State; Elijah Lawson, Seattle, and the O’Laire family, Homer, Alaska.

The campaign’s primary target is people from their mid-20s to late 30s, Millennials drawn to healthy, sustainable food choices and eager to support foods in line with those values. The campaign theme of “wild taste” and “amazing place”, telling the story of the Bay, its salmon and its fishermen, is also designed to appeal to other secondary demographics, including baby boomers in their 50s through early 70s, the BBRSDA said. Boulder is an upper middle class community, where the estimated median family income in 2011 was estimated at $113,681.

The promotion will include Bristol Bay point of sale materials, including recipe cards, recipe posters, printed fish wrap paper and stickers, branded bibs, and specialty mugs. The campaign will also include retail training and working in partnership with Chefs Collaborative to launch Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon as a leading premium seafood brand.

The test period will run through year’s end with strategic touch points built in to measure retailer participation, effectiveness of training tools, consumer preferences for the branding and, ultimately, will measure sales performance at the retail level.

The BBRSDA plans to produce a year-end project report along with strategic recommendations for launching this effort nationwide in 2017.