Right now many companies are cutting back on their marketing to limit costs. A result of this is many media companies suffering and having to let people go. But seafood trading company chooses a different approach.
“We have to do more branding, and the branding of social media, as a lot of people are online,” says Patrick Warren, president of Smokey Bay Seafood Group, who trades seafood from the US and Canada to mainly the Asian market, to SalmonBusiness.
Smokey Bay Seafood Group is a multinational enterprise with offices in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State, USA. The company sells farmed Atlantic salmon, Wild Pacific salmon, farmed King and Coho Salmon, cod sablefish, clam, crab, oysters, lobster and sushi items.
The company usually sells to wholesalers, foodservice and retail distributors in North America, Asia and Europe.
After the coronavirus infiltrated their company some weeks back, the company has not been able to sell seafood on to their main market in Vietnam.
To make it through this challenging period the company is using more time and energy on their marketing strategy to make sure they stand out and are noticed by all the people sitting at home behind their screens.
“We can’t move products but we can invest in our company through marketing,” says Patrick Warren and explains that he has therefore chosen not to let go of employees in his marketing team, even though this could be a spared expense area.
“We got extremely good marketing people here, who will help us get through this. We have to switch our focus over to marketing,” he underlines.
As more customers are switching over to buying via digital platforms, this is also a matter, that the company is investing in, so they can serve the growing digital clients when everything settles back down.
Patrick Warren explains how every processor and supplier in the seafood industry, which usually supplies the hospitality sector is now trying to switch over to feed supermarkets nationally.
“People have to be feed. The food business is a pretty good place to be, we just have to change the supply chain,” he says.
