A cheeky new advertising campaign from Boston, Mass.-based Legal Sea Foods aims to gain awareness of the term “pescatarian” and treat the practice of eating seafood – but no meat – as a religion.
The campaign, which began running this week, includes television, print and radio ads urging consumers, “It’s time to convert; it’s time to become Pescatarian,” after humorously showing how the pescatarian way of life trumps many traditions and miracles proudly worshiped by Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians and others.
“Moses split the Red Sea. We split lobster tails and drizzle melted butter on them,” according to the voiceover on one TV spot. “Presbyterians will give you a sermon. Pescatarians will give you a salmon,” says another. A web site, www.pescatarians.org, offers up humorous “pescatarian creeds” and famous pescatarians such as “Noah (probably).”
Legal Sea Foods is known for funny, often controversial campaigns that have included references to the movie “Brokeback Mountain” and fish that hurled insults, such as “bite me.” Greenpeace and other groups criticized the restaurant company’s 2011 ads, which featured heart-tugging environmental public-service spots about "saving" salmon, trout and other seafood, but then suddenly showed customers eating the seafood.
Legal Sea Foods’ President and CEO Roger Berkowitz champions the company’s “edgy” campaigns. “To be a really good advertiser or marketer, you have to get through the clutter and you have to be a bit edgy to do that. If we say, ‘Our fish is great. Come eat it’, people are going to glaze over. What is our point of differentiation?” Berkowitz told SeafoodSource.
Plus, humorous campaigns such as the pescatarian-themed ads can help court millennial customers, the “largest growing part of the population right now,” Berkotwitz said.
People who may be offended by the new campaign – which is solely intended to be humorous – probably are not very bright, according to Berkowtiz. “Fish is brain food. If you are truly offended by these ads, you probably don’t eat fish to begin with.”
Legal Sea Foods’ longtime ad firm, DeVito/Verdi developed the pescatarian-themed campaign to “increase the use of pescatarian in the English language,” said Ellis Verdi, president of DeVito/Verdi in New York. “If you have that much discipline [to eat pescatarian], it is somewhat religious in nature. People feel good about themselves when they do that; it’s a very healthy diet.”
Berkowitz agrees with the religious sentiment. “Is it a religion? No. But eating seafood can be a religious experience, and that’s good enough for us,” he said in a statement from DeVito/Verdi. “To be honest, we’d love for people to suddenly self-identify as ‘Pescatarian,’ not unlike vegetarian, when it comes to discussing eating habits and preferences. That would truly be a miracle.”
