Multi-million dollar US advertising campaign to promote unsustainable canned tuna collapses
Source: Blogpost by Oliver Knowles
In March, just a year after the launch of a planned three-year, multi-million dollar advertising push to try and increase sales of unsustainable canned tuna in the US, the “Tuna the Wonderfish†advertising campaign – funded by US tuna companies and executed by the US industry lobby group National Fisheries Institute (NFI) – has collapsed, having already spent a staggering USD 20 million (Euros 15 million) of a planned USD 60 million budget.
Industry sources are reported to have radically scaled back the planned work as it has failed to increase sales as expected. The USD 20 million has already been spent on expensive television, newspaper and magazine advertisements.
The advertising campaign exposes the huge contradiction at the heart of some of the tuna industry’s biggest players, who like to talk about sustainability but instead of delivering change spend huge amounts of money advertising products that are caught using destructive and wasteful fishing methods.
Greenpeace is running an international campaign to encourage major tuna brands and retailers to sell sustainable tuna and to phase out the use of highly destructive Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) used in purse seine fisheries. In the US, Greenpeace is working to change leading brand Chicken of the Sea because they continue to sell tuna caught in purse seine FAD fisheries and poorly regulated longline fisheries, both of which waste an array of marine life other than tuna including endangered sharks and turtles. Chicken of the Sea is one of the main sponsors of the failed advertising campaign.
Scrap the ads, invest in sustainability!
Why doesn’t the US tuna industry instead spend money improving its fishing operations and supporting responsible fisheries? Putting proper sustainability measures in place makes good business sense for the long term because it means safeguarding future supplies, in contrast to the NFI’s bad advice of spending money to drive up short-term profits.
USD 20 million has already been wasted, but USD 40 million of the originally earmarked budget remains. If the industry is serious about its environmental credentials, it should put its money where its mouth is and spend the money to change its fishing practices to make them less harmful to our oceans. In March, Italian tuna brand Mareblu became the latest tuna company to change its ways by committing to phase out destructive FADs. Momentum is growing to transform the tuna industry. Who will be next? The world needs tuna for tomorrow, not slick ads from companies that are lagging behind visionary competitors.
Oliver Knowles is a Greenpeace International oceans campaigner based in London.
