Looking Beyond the Dock

The Wild Alaska Pollock fishery recently got a huge compliment courtesy of the seafood industry trade publication IntraFish. The IntraFish reporting team: Drew Cherry, Rachel Sapin and John Fiorillo recently did a podcast on the state of the Wild Alaska Pollock fishery and the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) during which they discussed recent marketing efforts, the GAPP Annual Meeting and how the industry is working together to build demand for Wild Alaska Pollock. They commended the industry for coming together like never before and looking “beyond the dock” towards our global customers and ultimate consumers.

The chatter was around how the Wild Alaska Pollock fishery has historically been focused on production, which makes sense. Harvesting and production are the key components of our business—how we get the fish and what we do with them have been, and always should be, paramount.

But the industry has come a long ways as of late. They’ve looked into the future and realized, as the IntraFish team astutely pointed out, that the longevity of the fishery and the sustainability (in every sense of the word) of the Wild Alaska Pollock business is in creating new demand for Wild Alaska Pollock; adding value for our fish.

Simply put, we need value to be successful over the long haul; it’s no longer just a volume game. I came from an industry that was all about volume and as a result, they had to work hard to break out of the mold of being seen as a basic commodity. In traditional agriculture—pork, beef and dairy—you can raise and grow more animals every year. The more you grow, the more (theoretically) that you sell. And round and round we go with per capita consumption or trade volumes being the all important metrics.

As we all know, Wild Alaska Pollock is different. Our harvest is vigorously and meticulously managed through a public-private partnership that sets the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) every year to ensure the sustainability of the fishery. So, we can’t just “produce more”—meaning that in order to continue to evolve as an industry we’re going to have to find ways to get—as Trident Seafood’s Joe Bundrant says— “...more people eating more Wild Alaska Pollock in more ways--more often, globally.” We’re going to have to look well beyond the dock and add value through innovation.

Thankfully, I have this job as GAPP’s CEO because a group of visionary leaders came together and recognized the need to do just that. The GAPP Board of Directors met last week and took a peek at the first draft of GAPP’s 2020-2021 Strategic Plan which will focus a lot on how we continue to invest in innovation, work with our customers, from those at dock and beyond, to help share our story and build global excitement for Wild Alaska Pollock and its innumerable attributes.

Over the last year, GAPP has worked with our North American Partners to bring more than 13 new Wild Alaska Pollock products to market in more than 22,200 stores where it previously had never been. You can walk into retailers now, like Whole Foods, and find three or more Wild Alaska Pollock products, and more to come in the new decade. That’s exciting. And it’s adding value.

More than that, when you look at the investment that GAPP and its members have made into the Partnership Program this year—almost 3 million dollars in GAPP funds (after round 3) that brought a matching from our partners of more than 4 to 1, the marketing investment is unprecedented in our industry's history. In other words, for just those Wild Alaska Pollock campaigns tied to GAPP's North American Partnership Program, our industry has seen a marketing investment on the order of 15 million dollars obligated in just this year alone! And, we have companies that are creating products with Wild Alaska Pollock that have never thought to use the fish before—and investing in that innovation and the promotion of those new products like never before. That’s building excitement for our fish that is more than just a flash in the pan—that’s investing in creating a diversified product range and creating long-term loyalty to our fish, in all of its new forms, that could prove to be priceless.

In 2020, GAPP is going to go more global, both with its partnership programs and with its narrative development, working to understand the attributes of Wild Alaska Pollock (and its products) that are most motivational to consumers in our major export markets. That’s looking well beyond the dock at how we can create awareness, familiarity, loyalty and build lasting demand for our fish.

I think it’s exciting that people are noticing the buzz around Wild Alaska Pollock and the consistent, deliberate and strategic way we’ve worked together as an industry to start to build that buzz, that momentum.

As the IntraFish team noted—we have a long way to go and it won’t always be easy. We’ll experience setbacks, as an organization, as a community and as an industry. Some of our new products may fail. Our marketing campaigns may fall flat. We may lose a customer or a market here and there. But, admittedly, we’re better off now than we were a year ago and people are taking notice. We’re making progress. We’re moving forward.

There’s a lot of dock out there and so much beyond it—but we’re walking it together as an industry. And that’s the most important, and impressive, thing.