Lobster Marketing Campaign Eyes Chefs, Media, Digital Users

by Laurie Schreiber

ROCKPORT—Lobster marketing specialists at Weber Shandwick, the public relations firm contracted by the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative in 2015, are forging ahead with plans for 2016 to further push the Maine “new shell” brand.

Plans for 2016 will build on initiatives in 2015, Weber Shandwick senior vice president Dorree Gurdack said during a session on the topic during the recent Maine Fishermen’s Forum. Those included outreach to media, chefs, and culinary specialists, opening up new conventional and social media, building a new website, achieving the designation of Sept. 25 as National Lobster Day, getting lobster placed on the menu at the White House’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and undertaking promotions such as tailgate parties for lobster tails. Through Oct. 1, 2015, the collaborative secured 471 million media impressions with an ad equivalency of $1.79 million—a media value that alone exceeds the 2015 budget of $1.5 million.

The budget for 2016 through 2018 is $2.4 million per year. The money comes from harvester and dealer license surcharges.

Allyson Hoar, a group manager at Weber Shandwick, spoke to the role of lobster fishermen as storytellers.

“You have such great emotional stories to tell that are really impactful for media,” Hoar said.

Chefs are an important target group for the marketing effort, Hoar said. A surprising element, she said, is that none of the chefs contacted knew what new-shell lobster is.

“They knew that Maine lobster is the best, but they didn’t know why,” she said.

Connecting chefs with lobstermen is important in driving awareness, she said.

“We’re an eating culture. We love to know the origin of our food,” Hoar said.

Maine lobster was brought to a number of events in 2015, such as restaurant shows and tasting events.

“We’re building our foundation and educating consumers, media, and chefs about our product and brand,” Hoar said.

George Snell, Weber Shandwick’s senior vice-president of digital and social communications, said the firm also revamped Maine lobster’s “social footprint. That meant a whole new look and feel for the website. It’s big, bold, and beautiful.”

They also created six different social media channels—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Investment in digital and social media outlets is essential, Snell said.

“Right now, there 7.1 billion people: 3.2 billion are on the internet,” he said. “Of those, on any given day, 1.2 billion have Facebook accounts.”

Forty percent of adults in the U.S. get their news first from Facebook, a trend that’s growing, not only in the U.S. but around the world, he said. Likewise, other social media outlets have hundreds of millions of users.

“You cannot do marketing in North America or anywhere else in the world without social and digital media, “Snell said. “News is migrating there….And what powers digital is content. So we need to create content to make it work.”

One example of how social media drives food awareness is how millennials consume at restaurants, Snell said.

“Millennials don’t just consume food. They take pictures, post about it, do ratings of the restaurants—while they’re still eating in the restaurant,” he said. “Eating in restaurants has become a secondary experience. The good news is that eating a lobster is an experience. And it’s experience that people want to share.”

Instagram is also transforming the way in which people cover the food and restaurant industries, he said.

“Dining has reached a point where it’s an Instagram experience. You have a meal, you record it, talk about it, post it. Right now, there are 178 million photographs on Instagram that have the hashtag ‘food.’…So you can see how excited people are about food on Instagram.”

Snell said a Poynter Institute study, published in 2015, shows that journalists make up nearly a quarter of Twitter users, based on a sample of 15,000 verified users.

According to the study, “News organizations and journalists tweet frequently about the content they produce and consume, and verified journalists follow more users on average compared to other verified groups in the Twitterverse.”

According to Snell, “What they’re doing is looking for stories and people to write about. So we need to be there putting content on Twitter and Facebook.”

Gurdack said the agency will build on these efforts.

“In 2015, we had a lot of opportunity to learn what resonated with chefs and social media,” Gurdack said. “We’re taking that learning and making sure we carry that forward in 2016.”

In 2015, she said, the agency found that many people from outside Maine have an emotional connection with the state. That contributed to both chefs and media being receptive to the Maine new-shell story.

“When we first set out to do this, we weren’t sure exactly how it would go,” she’s said. “But we found out it got us in front of media and chefs in a different way. It was a new story, even if they knew about Maine lobster.”

But it came as a surprise that, even among chefs familiar with Maine lobster, their menus didn’t always specify that their lobster came from Maine.

“We found that they assumed that people will know that the lobster on the menu is from Maine,” said Snell.

So for 2016, part of the focus will be to get the Maine connection onto menus, said Gurdack, while also continuing to position Maine new shell lobster as a unique seasonal delicacy. There’s something of a push-pull strategy to making the menu connection happen, she said.

“We would love for people going to restaurants saying, ‘Tell me about where this lobster is from,’ and then ask chefs for new-shell lobster,” she said.

The agency is planning three “Maine After Midnight” events for chefs and tastemakers, in July and August, in three key markets—Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and New York. The midnight timeframe is designed to catch chefs after a night shift in the kitchen.

“These events will educate chefs on what Maine lobster is, what Maine new-shell lobster is and get them to reimagine” their use of lobster as an ingredient, said Hoar. Typically, she said, chefs think of lobster as one big component on a plate, accompanied by a slice of lemon and some melted butter. The agency seeks to acquaint chefs with the versatility of lobster as an ingredient in salads, soups, and the like, Hoar said. And the agency will also target front-of-the-house employees.

“We want them to be passionate about the story and the product,” she said. “We’ll also invite media and influencers to these events. We’ll bring down Maine lobstermen, and we’ll partner with a host chef in each market to help spread the awareness.”

Chefs are an important piece of these events because of their stature in culinary communities, she said.

As they did last year, the agency will also invite chefs to Maine, to visit with lobstermen on their boats.

“They’re really excited once they get on the boat,” said Hoar. “they want to tell that story and share that with their customers.”