Swimming Upstream

SWIMMING

UPSTREAM SEAFOOD IS PRAISED FOR BOTH ITS HEALTH PROPERTIES AND ITS VARIETY OF FLAVOR PROFILES, BUT AMERICANS,

BY AND LARGE, PREFER CHICKEN, BEEF AND PORK. LACKING AN INDUSTRY-WIDE MARKETING EFFORT, SEAFOOD BRANDS AND NONPROFITS ARE WORKING INDIVIDUALLY TO LURE IN CONSUMERS.

BY CHRISTINE BIRKNER | SENIOR STAFF WRITER

 cbirkner@ama.org

Photography by Colin Beckett

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W

HAT PROTEIN WAS ON YOUR DINNER PLATE LAST NIGHT ?

BASED ON MARKET RESEARCH, IT’S SAFE TO SAY THAT FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF YOU, IT WAS CHICKE N.

Chicken is the most common and most popular protein in the United States, and beef and pork have earned their spots on Americans’ grocery lists, too. Meanwhile, seafood, in all of its shapes and sizes and scales and shells, places a distant fourth.

Despite its health benefits and versatility, seafood has yet to register in many U.S. consumers’ consideration sets. It’s a perception problem, experts say, and a sign that the seafood industry needs to invest in educational marketing initiatives to better inform consumers of seafood’s health properties and its ease of use in at-home meal preparations.

The problem, though, is that unlike other foodstuffs, seafood lacks an industry-wide marketing organization or initiative, which means that there’s no salty-air equivalent to “Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner,” or, “Pork: The Other White Meat.” Instead, seafood brands and industry groups are working individually to play catch-up to the more popular proteins, and they’re challenged to turn the tide on consumer perception.

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SO MANY FISH IN THE SEA

In 2013, Americans consumed 83.1 pounds of chicken, 56.4 pounds of beef and 46.8 pounds of pork, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. U.S. seafood consumption, meanwhile, was just 14.5 pounds per capita in 2013, down from 16.2 pounds per capita in 2005, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

U.S. seafood consumption also is dwarfed by seafood consumption on a global scale: In 2013, Japanese people consumed 145 pounds per capita of seafood, Chinese consumed 56 pounds and Russians consumed 42 pounds, according to the NMFS. American consumers are overlooking seafood for many reasons, experts say. Some consumers sampled a fish dish long ago and wrote it off for being “too fishy,” while others like to eat seafood in restaurants but are unsure about how to cook it at home. “When they’re buying other sources of protein, consumers have a much better feel for what’s in it, where it comes from and how it will turn out when they cook it,” says Warren Solochek, vice president of client services at Port Washington, N.Y.-based consumer research company The NPD Group Inc., who researches the seafood industry.

Seafood also might not be as readily accessible as other proteins in grocery stores nationwide, or it’s judged to be too expensive.

“The average price of chicken has been dropping for the last 20 or 30 years, and that’s had an impact on seafood, which is at a higher price point, in general,” says Gil Sylvia, director of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station in Newport, Ore. and professor of marine resource economics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. “If household incomes continue to go down, which they have over the last six or seven years, people are going to consume less seafood.”

Another issue is perceived seafood safety.

Some consumers worry about getting food poisoning from spoiled seafood. Moreover, for years, consumers have been told to be mindful of mercury levels in seafood, especially when young or pregnant, and many are unaware that most seafood varieties contain very little mercury— and that the benefits of eating seafood, in general, outweigh the risks, experts say.

Eco-conscious consumers, meanwhile, are concerned about whether or not the seafood that they’re purchasing was caught by sustainable means, as some seafood varieties are overfished. “The seafood industry has to do more to create the demand the same way that beef and pork have done it, and they’re starting from far behind,” Solochek says.

Many of the barriers to increased seafood consumption could be overcome by savvy marcom efforts to educate consumers about seafood’s health benefits, sustainability and ease of preparation. “The industry, collectively, needs to help consumers understand seafood, embrace its variety, and think of it as valuable eating for its health benefits and taste,” Sylvia says.

However, the industry’s lack of any centralized marketing support remains a significant impediment, and given the diversity of seafood species, a cross-industry effort would be much more logistically challenging than it is for beef and pork producers, for example, who can work together through the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Board.

“The ‘seafood industry’ is a misnomer,” says Gavin Gibbons, vice president of communications at the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to educating consumers about seafood safety, sustainability and nutrition, whose members include seafood producers and wholesalers. “It’s actually a lot of little industries. The people who produce salmon, they might do farmed salmon or

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wild salmon. Then you have shrimp, which might be wild-caught Gulf shrimp or imported shrimp from Southeast Asia.

These different divisions often have little, if anything, to do with each other, from a marketing perspective, and even from a flavor profile perspective. It makes having one voice and effort … very difficult. Which image do you use in the ads? What’s the health attribute that you promote most: the omega-3s, the vitamin D, the selenium? …

If we had a best practices manual on all of it, it would be thousands of pages long.”

NOAA put together a regulatory framework for an industry-wide seafood marketing effort eight years ago, but the seafood industry hasn’t yet followed through, says Laurel Bryant, chief of external affairs at NOAA. “It’s up to the industry to get together and tax themselves, and get it started. There’s a lot of potential there … but you have really disparate group. It’s not like it’s all cows, [where the product differentiation is that] one is in Colorado and one is in Montana.”

A RISING TIDE

A rising tide lifts all boats, and the U.S. seafood industry recently has been getting some marketing help from the

federal government and from individual organizations’ efforts. Educating consumers about seafood’s health benefits has become a pillar of seafood-related communications, and many educational efforts must balance promoting nutritional benefits with disproving consumers’ inaccurate perceptions regarding mercury levels.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), all fish and shellfish contain trace amounts of mercury, and some, including shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish, contain higher amounts of mercury that might harm babies or young children. However, many popular varieties, like shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish, are low in mercury and are much safer to eat.

Consumers often don’t know the difference, Bryant says. “Mercury is such a loaded word. It’s like plutonium. It evokes such a visceral response, and the science is so complicated. Most seafood, when you eat it—because selenium is in it—attaches to the mercury and flushes it out. The benefits of seafood consumption actually outweigh the risk … but your average consumer hears ‘mercury’ and that’s it.”

Gibbons agrees: “Mercury is an issue that’s universally misunderstood and misreported on. Regardless of how much mercury is in

TOP 10 MOST CONSUMED SEAFOOD VARIETIES IN THE U.S.

SALMON

1 SHRIMP

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2

PA

TILAPIA

3 CANNED TUNA

4

5 POLLOCK

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your seafood, that negative impression that mercury is in it has definitely had an impact on consumption.”

The diversity of seafood species further complicates the matter, Sylvia says. “Albacore tuna is high in mercury, but young albacore tuna, which we catch off the Oregon coast, are relatively low in mercury, so our young albacore tuna sellers have to demonstrate that.”

NFI works to clear up misconceptions about seafood’s mercury through media outreach. A section on its blog, “Straight Talk on Mercury and Fish,” includes physician testimonials stating that the health benefits of eating seafood outweigh the risks associated with trace amounts of mercury.

On its website and through media outreach, the Juneau, Alaska-based Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), the marketing arm for the state’s seafood industry, highlights the fact that Alaskan salmon, cod and pollock have the lowest mercury levels of all seafood.

In addition to countering those negative perceptions and inaccurate beliefs, the industry needs to communicate seafood’s many nutritional benefits to increase its consumption, experts say. Seafood contains omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to improve brain function and may lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s

PANGASIUS

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disease. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that incorporating seafood into your diet could lower your risk of heart disease by 36%.

In June 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines advising pregnant women, nursing mothers and children to eat fish two or three times per week, a departure from previous guidelines, issued in 2004, which said that pregnant women should limit their seafood intake to a maximum of 12 ounces of fish each week. And the USDA now recommends that everyone should eat two servings of fish per week to improve heart health.

NFI promotes seafood’s health benefits through its website, AboutSeafood.com, which contains recipes and scientific studies about seafood’s role in preventing heart disease and helping brain function.

It also works with the Seafood Nutrition Partnership, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit backed by seafood producers, which lists recipes on its website to encourage consumers to eat seafood at least twice a week.

“Medical practitioners and public policy folks will use terms like ‘ounces per week,’ but fish is not medicine,” Gibbons says. “People eat meals, not ounces. [We] encourage a narrative that says, ‘You can

CATFISH

7 COD

8

CLAMS

9

10

CRAB

Source: AboutSeafood.com

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improve your health [by] feeding your family these meals three times a week.’ ” In June 2014, NFI and the Seafood Nutrition Partnership launched Eating Heart-Healthy, a program designed to help women curb their risk of heart disease through a seafoodrich diet, in partnership with Boston-based Brigham & Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, along with Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (RTH), an affordable-housing community for low- and moderate-income families. For four weeks, female RTH residents sampled omega-3 capsules, participated in heart health talks and cooking demonstrations, and were provided budget-friendly seafood recipes. At the end of the program, doctors estimated that 92% of participants lowered their risk of sudden cardiac death, and six in 10 participants were at a lower risk for general cardiac problems.

The program and its findings were promoted via a video on the Seafood Nutrition Partnership’s YouTube channel, and through the partnership’s and Brigham & Women’s Hospital’s Twitter accounts with the hashtag #EatingHeartHealthy.

ASMI promotes seafood’s health attributes through an online brochure, “The Benefits of Eating Wild Alaska Seafood in Plain English,” which includes information on seafood’s impact on brain and heart health. “It’s all supported by independent science,” says Tyson Fick,

communications director at ASMI. “We’re lucky enough to have the product to back it up.”

Due, in part, to ASMI’s promotional efforts, when consumers were asked which U.S. states come to mind when they think of sources for great seafood, Alaska was No. 1, and 45% of consumers said that they were likely to recommend Alaskan seafood to a friend or family member, according to a 2013 survey of 1,000 consumers around the U.S. conducted for ASMI by Chicago-based research firm Datassential.

Along with governmental groups and industry organizations, individual seafood producers and brands also are investing in educational and media outreach programs to promote seafood’s health benefits. In 2014, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia-based High Liner Foods Inc., whose brands include Icelandic Seafood, American Pride Seafood, FPI and Viking, began working with the Seafood Nutrition Partnership to promote seafood’s health attributes in Midwestern cities such as Memphis and Indianapolis, which, historically, have lower seafood consumption rates than cities on the coasts, says Jim LaBelle, vice president of foodservice marketing at High Liner Foods. “It’s a grassroots effort. Instead of a national TV campaign, we’re trying to work with local associations, influencers and thought leaders on a city-by-city basis.” The mayor of Memphis and the first

////////////////////////////////////////////////// “PEOPLE EAT MEALS, NOT OUNCES. WE ENCOURAGE A NARRATIVE THAT SAYS, ‘YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH BY] FEEDING YOUR FAMILY THESE MEALS THREE TIMES A WEEK.' '' -GAVIN GIBBONS, NATIONAL FISHERIES INSTITUTE JANUARY 2015 | MARKETING NEWS

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20% EATING A HEALTHIER DIET

23% CONVENIENCE

22% HEALTH BENEFITS

REASONS THAT CONSUMERS CITE FOR CHOOSING FROZEN SEAFOOD

4% WANT TO REPLACE

4% DESIRE TO IMPROVE COOKING SKILLS

4%6%WANTTASTETO REPLACE MEAT WITH SEAFOOD

MEAT WITH SEAFOOD

Source: Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

lady of Indianapolis both hosted cooking demonstrations in their cities, as well as free screenings for omega-3 index levels, which were promoted through local media outlets.

WHAT’S BITING?

Sustainability is a guiding force in the marketing of any food category, and in seafood’s case, it comes down to which fish or shellfish are being fished or farmed in ways that have the least harmful impacts on the environment.

Seafood Watch, a program run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., is a wellrecognized communications tool to help consumers figure out which fish varieties are the most eco-friendly to eat at any given time.

Consumers can search a database of 2,500 seafood species on the organization’s app or website to find out whether a particular variety is sustainable.

Seafood Watch also works with restaurants and retailers to educate them about sustainably raised seafood, and distributes a pocket guide with

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information on sustainably raised fish through its network of outreach partners, including zoos, aquariums and other conservation organizations.

Since the program’s inception in 1999, the Seafood Watch app has had more than 1 million downloads, and the organization has distributed more than 50 million pocket guides, according to Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, director of Seafood Watch.

Seafood Watch encourages consumers to ask questions about seafood’s origins at point of sale.

According to ASMI, 67% percent of consumers get their information about the seafood that they purchase from the seafood person at the store, so adequate in-store education could make the difference between whether or not consumers purchase seafood, Fick says. “From the 30,000foot level, people get confused. They say: ‘How do I know which fish to choose? How was it harvested? Which fishery did it come from?

Never mind. I’ll just have the chicken.’ ” Kemmerly agrees that improving transparency around seafood’s origin and sustainability will help increase consumption. “They might not say:

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te

‘I’m going to try the arctic char tonight. It tastes just like salmon, and it’s farmed in a responsible way.’ But it’s about trying to get U.S. consumers over the fear of trying and preparing different things,” she says.

SCHOOL OF FISH

Educating consumers on how to prepare seafood also can help promote seafood purchases. “Unless you live on the coasts, a lot of times, when people buy a piece of fish, they have no clue how it’s going to turn out,” NPD’s Solochek says. “Consumers don’t have enough knowledge about the different species of fish—the difference in taste, the difference in cooking prep. Everybody knows shellfish versus fin fish, but if someone says, ‘Would you like barramundi?’ you say, ‘What does it taste like, and where does it come from?’ ” Packaging is an important point-of-sale educational opportunity, Fick says. According to ASMI, consumers are 53% more likely to cook seafood when the packaging includes recipes or in-store coupons, so in 2011, the organization launched its “Cook It Frozen” promotion, which provides supermarkets nationwide with posters with tear-off recipe pads, on-pack recipe leaflets and DVDs that teach supermarket employees to put on in-store cooking demonstrations. “Less than half of seafood consumed in the United States is at retail,” Fick says. “Most of it is people eating out. We’re working to make people comfortable with cooking it at home.” To target the next generation of seafood fans, ASMI provides recipes and posters for school lunch programs, and released a kids’ cookbook.

“We always hear people say, ‘I eat seafood when I go out, but I’m afraid I can’t prepare it the same way at home,’ ” Gibbons echoes.

“When they see the online tutorials [on NFI’s website], they see that seafood is a lot easier to prepare than they think.” NFI’s Dish on Fish blog offers recipes and tips for cooking seafood. The organization also sponsors a microsite, Pick My Fish, on AboutSeafood.com that makes seafood recommendations based

on flavor profiles. “People can go in and say, ‘I like something that’s like steak, or something that’s flaky,’ ” Gibbons says. “It prevents people from having to go out and buy five different types of seafood and sample them. Anytime we can compare tastes and preparation to something people already know, it can help break down that barrier and make them feel more comfortable.”

Recipes, cooking tutorials and sampling all feature prominently in High Liner Foods’ marketing efforts. In June 2014, the company ran a sampling campaign in Denver, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Nashville and Cincinnati, offering free fish tacos, recipes and coupons distributed from a fish taco food truck, and conducted in-store cooking demonstrations with local chefs. “A lot of people aren’t used to eating seafood, so once you can get them to try it, they end up thinking about it more often as part of their meals,” says Jeff Tahnk, vice president of retail marketing at High Liner Foods.

To get consumers comfortable with ordering fish while dining out, High Liner Foods partnered with Guinness in March 2014 on a seafood line for restaurants. High Liner’s Icelandic cod, salmon, tilapia and shrimp are coated with glazes made with Guinness stout, and the Guinness logo appears next to each item on menus. “Guinness is the No. 1 stout beer, so it was a way to make seafood more approachable,” LaBelle says. “So far, we’re exceeding our expectations [in sales].”

At the retail level, High Liner offers easyto-prepare products such as salmon burgers.

“Americans love hamburgers, so the salmon burger gives consumers seafood in a form they’re familiar with,” LaBelle says. “For us, it’s about putting it in front of them in new ways and getting them to keep it top of mind, so they incorporate it into their regular meal patterns.”

When Marine Harvest ASA, a Bergen, Norway-based seafood producer, wanted to expand its U.S. product line, its first priority was to address Americans’ fear of cooking seafood, says Christopher Cornyn, president of Dine, a Foster City, Calif.-based food

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marketing agency that developed the brand positioning for the project. “When [consumers] go into the supermarket, they don’t know how much to order and they don’t want to look dumb in front of the guy behind the counter. They don’t want to undercook it or overcook it. They’re scared it’s going to smell up their kitchen.”

Thus, Marine Harvest’s new product, Rebel Fish, which launched in four retail chains nationwide in summer 2014, includes a singleserve, vacuum-packed salmon fillet along with a seasoned rub, which can be prepared in 90 seconds, the company says. “It was a matter of making it friendly, having easy preparation and making sure it tasted great,” Cornyn says. “Convenience is one of the top drivers for purchasing items like that. If the seafood industry figures out how to deliver on taste and convenience, it’s a winning proposition.”

Such products will help the seafood category compete with chicken, beef and pork, Gibbons says. “Companies [are] recognizing that if they take the first step for someone who’s afraid of cooking it at home, and say, ‘We’ll marinate it for you, or put the crust on for you,’ it can be really helpful in breaking down the barriers.”

Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters and The Story of Sushi, who worked as a full-time crewman on a commercial lobster boat, and has worked in high-end sushi restaurants in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, says that ease and convenience, coupled with sustainability, could help increase seafood consumption. “Any packaging or delivery technology that can make seafood a higher-end item to take home would be pretty great, like a vacuum-packed, super-fresh fillet from Long Island Sound. … I could just cut the package open, throw it in a pan and cook it, and the label shows me the name of the fishing cooperative where it came from and when it was caught. It might not be cheap, but I think there are quite a few consumers who would [buy] that every so often, rather than [buying] it never.”

THE CATCH

Current marketing efforts from individual seafood organizations or purveyors aren’t enough to boost the industry as a whole, argues Phil Lempert, a consumer behavior and retail analyst, and editor

of SupermarketGuru.com, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based food marketing trends website. “If you want to change behavior, you’ve got to spend money, whether it’s TV, radio, whatever,” he says.

“Having recipes in-store isn’t going to move the needle enough. If they want to bring consumption up to 60 pounds a year, where beef is, it’s going to take a long time and a lot of money. These producers have to get together, lay down their arms and say, ‘If we can work together, we can increase consumption.’ ” A cross-industry effort would help, but given its inherent difficulty, seafood companies could benefit, instead, by focusing on local, artisanal food trends, Corson says. “The conventional approaches to seafood marketing might be at a plateau. We’ve sort of tried everything there is to try for getting customers comfortable with seafood, and it seems like there are certain roadblocks that are still there. The future is in a much greater attention and care to the kind of things that are beginning to take root in other areas of the food industry, like the meat industry: small producers, local, sustainable and artisanal.

I’m not actually sure if there’s going to be one campaign that unifies everyone and works for everybody. It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

There’s an outlier in the seafood consumption conundrum, though, and given all of the negative consumer perceptions surrounding seafood, it’s an odd one. Consumption of fish, in general, pales in comparison to that of other proteins, but consumption of raw fish continues to increase nationwide. The current ubiquity of sushi from Los Angeles to Des Moines to Brooklyn means that there’s hope for the seafood industry, in general, Corson says. “America is more of a meat culture than a seafood culture, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s amazing how much Americans have started to eat sushi, considering the original disgust of eating raw fish. It’s really become an American meal now. It’s everywhere.

It’s in baseball stadiums. It’s a testament to the potential of seafood. … I wonder if the marketing of seafood in the U.S. hasn’t shot itself in the foot by emphasizing too much the bland and the boring—those big, safe, tasteless frozen fillets.

Maybe it’s time for us to rediscover what many European and Asian cultures have known all along: that there’s so much more to seafood than that.” m

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