Brand & Social Strategy: Honey Smoked Fish
Reframing Seafood for Skeptics: Building Brand Awareness for Honey Smoked Fish
Honey Smoked Fish delivers hot-smoked salmon products as a convenient, nutritious, and delicious protein option for everyday moments. Market research showed that consumers didn’t understand the product or its application to their lives. We were tasked with concepting an overarching marketing campaign to address this gap, build brand awareness, and spark engagement on social.
Brand: Honey Smoked Fish
Industry: CPG Food & Beverage
Focus: Brand Awareness, Education, and Engagement
My Role: Social Strategy & Execution, Creative Direction
Cross-Functional Partners: Brand Team, Art Director, Designer, Photographer, Videographer
Americans are “afraid” of buying and cooking fish. There is a general misconception about taste, nutrition, food safety, and lifestyle integration
The Challenge:
The Goal:
Increase brand awareness, drive consumer adoption, and overcome the perceived barriers to purchasing and cooking fish, ultimately establishing HSF as a leading brand in the smoked salmon market.
Primary Consumer:
Age: 25-44
Gender: Predominantly female
Marital Status: Married
Location: Suburban areas
Lifestyle: Health-conscious, busy, values convenience and quality
Secondary Consumer:
Age: 45-54 or 55-64
Gender: Predominantly female
Marital Status: Married or widowed
Location: Suburban or rural areas
Lifestyle: Health-focused, appreciates convenience, may be more adventurous in the kitchen
Tagline: Seriously?! Salmon?!
Capturing the moment of disbelief when people discover salmon can be this delicious and this easy.
Brand Tagline: Seriously Good. Seriously Simple.
Pillar 1 - Challenge the “fishy” myth
Pillar 2 - Celebrate the simplicity
Pillar 3 - Convert through taste
Pillar 4 - Create new habits
Rather than avoid objections, we brought them center stage, leveraging humor, education, raw reactions, and real use case scenarios to normalize the skepticism and then immediately disarm it. Through this framework, we were able to seamlessly integrate the campaign messaging in a variety of repeatable formats.
The Execution:
Are You A Fish Person? - UGC on-the-street style interview series introducing the product to skeptics and their reaction.
Taste Appeal - Macro video and photo series highlighting the variety of available flavors to combat the “fishy taste” objection.
Use Case - UGC video series highlighting the product, USPs, everyday use case, and where consumers can find it IRL.
In-person sampling - Capturing live reactions from trade show sampling and compiling them into a testimonial UGC video.
Impact:
The campaign delivered strong performance across primary KPIs
Increased Reach (2.7M) & Impressions (3M)
Higher Engagement Rates driven by comments, shares, and saves (Avg. ER by Reach: 5%)
Earned comments and questions signaling consideration
Ultimately, the campaign helped establish a cohesive brand voice and repeatable content pillars that became a foundation for ongoing brand storytelling. We learned that education can be most effective when delivered in relatable contexts, and that social listening combined with community engagement is the most powerful way to overcome category skepticism.