Sealord argues Kiwis should be louder about their love for fish

National seafood brand Sealord has launched a new long-term brand platform that argues Kiwis need to be louder and prouder about their love affair with fish.

Created in partnership with Motion Sickness, ‘We love fish’, is built around an insight Sealord has diagnosed as “fishame”. This speaks to the irrational guilt of the fish lover: that it’s too smelly for the office, too messy for the kitchen, and that eating frozen fish is somehow cheating.

Tracking fishame in the wild

Directed by The Sweetshop’s Damien Shatford, the launch film ‘The Manifishto’ follows a weathered skipper on a mission to cure the nation of fishame by tracking it down in the wild. He meets a man on a bus quietly pocketing an open tin after a nosey teenager clocks him mid-tuna, a woman hiding inside an air conditioning unit after a colleague catches her reheating fish in the office microwave and a kid at the dinner table interrogating his hoki fillet like a customs officer.

The skipper’s solution is simple: hold that fish high and proud, for all to see.

“We know many New Zealanders want to eat more fish, but there are small social and practical barriers that get in the way,” says Sealord general manager, marketing Melissa Butler. “‘We love fish’ celebrates those realities with humour and confidence, while reinforcing Sealord’s role as the brand to make it easier for people to truly love fish.”

Loving fish isn’t optional

“New Zealand is basically one long coastline,” says Motion Sickness creative director Will Macdonald.

“Which means loving fish isn’t really optional. We are biologically engineered to love the stuff. So when the message needed a messenger, there was only ever one candidate: Sealord. This is the first step to normalising public fish-scoffing, and I don’t think it will be the last.”

The platform’s hero film is supported by a suite of assets across TV, digital, social and out of home, rolled out nationwide by PHD Aotearoa.