case study: marine fisheries – always nc fresh
situation
Commercial fishing is a valuable part of North Carolina’s coastal heritage, economy, and culture. In fact, North Carolina’s wild-caught commercial seafood industry provides nearly $300 million in economic impact and supports 5,500+ jobs across communities in rural coastal areas.
However, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission needed to drive awareness and strengthen statewide public perception of the commercial fishing industry as well as address misconceptions.
solution
S&A Communications created the Always NC Fresh brand and developed and executed a multi-media marketing and communication campaign designed to build public awareness and ultimately enhance public perceptions of commercial fishing across the state.
The overall strategy was to craft and leverage compelling narratives about commercial fishing as a valuable part of NC’s coastal heritage, economy and culture and couple those narratives with impactful visuals to build awareness and elicit positive emotion. Efforts included:
- Social media – platforms established, organic posts, ad campaign, management and engagement
- Digital ads – designed using engaging images (stills and video) and concise copy
- Outdoor billboards – highly-visual images with targeted messages were placed in high-traffic coastal corridors
- Videos – wide assortment of broadcast quality, cinematic videos and television commercials were created to support the goals of the narrative and engage with statewide audiences (shared on social media, website, linear television and streaming/connected TV.)
results
Evaluation analyzed Key Performance Indicators including research findings that perceptions about commercial fishing were not overtly negative. We did not need to change perceptions as much as build awareness and educate on key points. Perhaps the greatest testament to results is that the client re-engaged S&A to continue the Always NC Fresh campaign and build on initial successes.
- There were more than 9,000 visits from digital display and online video that led to a direct spike in users to our website.
- Website homepage views were up 117% and the sustainable practices page views were up 272% during the previously mentioned campaign run dates.
- Our statewide mass media campaign garnered more than 10 million impressions with our target audience exposed to our messages more than 12 times.
- Digital display ads had more than 600,000 impressions delivered (via mobile, desktop and tablet).
- Social Media results were also strong with combined results for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter delivering more than 7.4 million impression, 94,000+ engagement, 23,000+ reactions and 16,000+ clicks