The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) has reappointed marketing agency LOTUS for another five years, to continue to help the organization in its efforts to position Alaska’s seafood industry as a premium global brand overseas, according to a 19 July announcement.
ASMI said it held a competitive re-pitch process, ultimately deciding that incumbent agency LOTUS was still the best-suited entity for the overseas marketing representative contract, which covers the whole of Northern Europe and involves positioning Alaska’s seafood industry as a competitive market-driven food production industry. The contract took effect on 1 July, 2019, ASMI confirmed in a press release.
For five years, LOTUS has worked with ASMI to “successfully [develop] consumer and B2B strategies for wild Alaska seafood,” a business partnership that has yielded growth in retail and foodservice distribution, ASMI said. Over the next five years, LOTUS will help ASMI promote the “development of new products for Alaska seafood, innovation in digital strategies, and consumer marketing briefs that maximize protein consumption ahead of the Rugby World Cup and Tokyo Olympics,” ASMI added.
LOTUS CEO Sarah Johnson will lead the ASMI account with support from account director Katie Petherbridge, trade director Rebecca Wilson, and account executive Isabel Luque.
“LOTUS is proud to continue to represent ASMI in the U.K. and Northern Europe. We are seeing more consumers turn to wild seafood as a source of natural of protein, with two major sporting events on the horizon it is an exciting time to be supporting this global industry,” LOTUS’s Johnson said.
“We are delighted that LOTUS will continue to represent the Alaska seafood industry in Northern Europe. Our industry is going from strength to strength with significant increases in consumption of Alaska seafood in the U.K. and Netherlands. We are delighted that LOTUS continue to lead and innovate in our trade and consumer outreach,” added Hannah Lindoff, the international marketing director at ASMI.
In 2018, Alaska’s seafood harvest produced 1.02 billion pounds of seafood with a total ex-vessel value of USD 3.37 billion (EUR 3 billion), said ASMI, which operates as a public-private partnership between the Alaska and the state’s seafood industry.
