SAFCOL and The Brand Shop – canning the traditional approach to the seafood category
SAFCOL, in conjunction with The Brand Shop, has unveiled a truly integrated campaign for the launch of SAFCOL’s new single cooked Premium Yellowfin Tuna and Atlantic Salmon range.
SAFCOL’s new Premium Range is a unique product for the category, utilising ground breaking single cooked technology, which produces a far superior tasting and more succulent end product. This formed the crux of the “Restaurant Quality” creative campaign. Supporting this creative inspiration is the partnership with Teresa Cutter, The Healthy Chef, who has developed a range of inspiring, healthy and delicious recipes.
The campaign, developed by Sydney agency, The Brand Shop breaks the traditional approach to FMCG and places Digital at the core of the strategy, supported by press, outdoor, sampling and in-store promotion.
Mark Swindon, Sales and Marketing Director for SAFCOL commented “The way in which consumers interact, engage and assimilate information has fundamentally changed and the traditional approach to FMCG marketing is no longer; we need to go where our consumers are, and that’s not necessarily the supermarket.”
At the centre of the campaign is the new SAFCOL website which has a consumer centric approach offering videos, recipe sharing and the opportunity to sign up to “6 Weeks of Lunch time Inspirations” to receive recipes to your inbox by Teresa Cutter.
Peter Bray, the General Manger and Digital Director at The Brand Shop commented, “this was a fantastic opportunity for The Brand Shop to work for an innovative brand and implement a truly integrated digital campaign that reflects the high calibre of SAFCOL and their products. It was also a great opportunity to bring high production values into online video, something that is often overlooked by the rest of the category”.
29 Comments
does it get any worse than this?
This is boring. I preferred SAFCOL’s older stuff, with the half-man/half-cat ad.
Am I missing something?
Why would you own up to doing this.
A few years ago this wouldn’t get a mention.
Sad very sad.
About what you would expect from TheBrandShop.
Wow a strategy from 2005 with an idea from 1990. Congratulations!
Err… Nice food styling.
Wow a lot of haters around here.
That’s a big press release for a little idea.
Is ‘Brand Shop’ another ‘Brand Power’ thing? Looks it.
This wouldn’t make a juniors portfolio. So if this represents the Brand Shop’s best work. Oh dear.
Bring back that Cat man TVC, this ad is woeful.
It’s the ad John West rejected.
Remember those great John West print ads? Clearly the Brand Shop don’t ….woeful stuff guys.
I’m not going to hide under the anonymous banner and offer full disclosure – I work at The Brand Shop – though these comments I raise in response are my own.
ANDY – why would we own up to this? While this campaign may not be “Sexy,” it’s (if you look beyond the screenshots) a very comprehensive campaign that is already proving to be effective. For this reason, we were happy to share it with our peers.
As fot the cat man, while a funny idea it had a negative impact on SAFCOL’s brand. Associating SAFCOL with cat food, though not the intent, was the result. This proved very detrimental for SAFCOL.
This campaign was all about creating relevant work that reached SAFCOL’s consumers. In this circumstance, that didn’t call for a “Big Ad,” rather an idea that repairs SAFCOL’s image and it’s commitment to quality.
It’s not all about being the cool kids on the block – rather being proud of producing great work – work that is effective, relevant and that helps your clients grow.
A lot of trolling here.
When did Campaign brief become Adsoftheworld.com
please don’t let this happen people
Peter: No excuse to be bland, then bore all of us with it. Believe it or not, creativity sells.
Peter Gardiner,
Andrew Ostrom here. (Previous Creative Director at Ad Partners). You say it Impacted negatively on the brand? Check the figures after week one. Sales tripled! It’s funny because before the Cat man campaign went to air the brand was ‘Invisible’ on shelves. Heard of the term ‘brand salience?’ This brand didn’t have any. Our client at the time, (which is not your now client) asked for an ad that got the brand on the radar. We did that. He asked for an ad that made a direct comparison to ordinary canned tuna. We did that.
In that category I can share a ‘real’ insight. Whilst shopping with a girlfriend many moons ago I picked up a can of John West and was about to put it in our trolley, she told me to put it back, she’s not eating that… It looks like cat food. Cat food? Yes, she replied, it’s mushy. She grabbed a can of Sirena instead. The reason it is mushy, like a lot of other canned tunas is because it is ‘sprayed’ into a can (Yes, gross!). Safcol Premium Selection, like Sirena, is sliced in one big chunk. Our Cat man ad tapped into this insight and exploited it. And yes as I said earlier, after week one, sales had tripled! That was the word from the official sales reports that came in from the supermarkets. As a result, Greenseas sales plummeted and John West went on an aggressive 5 for the price of 3 deal. The ad was done for $130K. Months later we then went onto produce a commercial (for a measly $30K) called ‘Hands’ for Salmon that coincided with SAFCOL’s sponsorship of the Biggest Loser.
Both helping the brand grow. Peter, you left out one crucial word along with relevant and effective and that is ‘Impactful’.
Criticize our work all you will but your work is invisible but worse still perpetuates a lie. ‘Restaurant Quality?’ Are you serious? If I payed $15 for a salmon fillet and it came out of a can I’d be pretty pissed off.
Sorry buddy but if you hadn’t noticed you’ve really got my cheese up.
Warm regards,
Andrew Ostrom.
It is shit.
Well said Andrew Ostrom. Sick of average agencies hiding behind ‘effective’. Even when it’s untrue.
Peter: Who actually did this ad if you guys are so proud of it?
The bland shop
‘I’m not going to hide under the anonymous banner and offer full disclosure’ – where are you hiding now?
I’m with Ozzie. I mean not with him with him, I just like his comment. And I agree that so much advertising is written to please the client and make our life easier with dragon-lady suits, that we forget who we’re trying to sell to. The boofhead who doesn’t give a flying nun about advertising. The ‘idiot’ or ‘great unwashed’ every brief refers to. The dickheads in research. Your wife.
Bring back Berny. Lemon, Levy’s, Avis and the rest might look oldskool, but at least they appealed to people. And I have an inkling they did it by not taking themselves too seriously, and not insulting peoples intelligence. Seems these days we’re more concerned with finding an innovative interactive media or way to deliver a message than finding a good message. And it’s all fucking fluff.
Hope all is well A.O, from someone who lacks the balls to post his name.
Hi all
Firstly, thanks for the feedback and Andrew you make some great points.
To the anonymous commenters: I completely support your right to an opinion, no matter how negative – in fact around four years ago I wrote for Campaign Brief about the need for anonymous comments to be allowed when Nobby was a touch concerned about them.
However, and I am not just referring to the posts in this thread, attacking people personally using an anonymous handle is just poor form. It is not wrong, it is just poor form. There is nothing smart about it, and posting under anonymity often says everything about a persons conviction. And to anonymous @ 6.01 PM, come on, are we really at the point on this blog where we are calling people out (not to mention the irony). The only thing I have found surprising is people getting so heated over a piece of advertising. Lets keep perspective.
As agencies when we put PR out there we should expect both positive and negative. Human nature is such that we tend to post more often when we have a negative opinion that a positive one, hence there is so often a bias towards the negative, even when the work is “award winning.” Personally I am not a huge fan of PR, but the rules of the game have been set.
Some of our work you will like, some of it you really, really won’t, and I would hope that would be the case as the I am happy to say the opinions of peers is important. My hope would be that you actually do like some of our previous and future work of course, so see you down the track. Feel free to email me any time if you feel like a chat.
Just my 2c
Cheers,
Peter
It’s a fair kick in the balls when you’re reminded that some people not only promote work like this (the bland magazine advertorial stuff, not the catman), but genuinely believe it’s a more responsible way to spend marketing dollars than something ‘risky’ and creative.
Sure, there’s a time and a place for grunt work. But I really don’t like hearing people put down the good stuff just to make themselves feel better about having to do the crap.
I thought only unenlightened client-types felt that way.
Even though this blog can be negative, it’s always generally right. Good ads get praised with several conflicting opinions and bad ones get absolutely buried. I’m not sure what you guys were hoping to achieve posting this spot?
Is the can really hard to open?
Ostrom is a legend. The guy knows his shit and BOTH AdPartners and SAFCOL made the wrong move.
As for the ad I don’t even AWARD School students would touch this one.
Right now I bet that AdPartners, Brandshop and SAFCOL are thinking ‘Wow, so this is what it feels like to be on a sinking ship.’
Spadz
Who even works at the brand shop anymore? Do they have a cd?