Resilience and Innovation
Those two words characterize the commercial salmon fishermen of BC as they were tested by a world turned upside down by a once-a-century pandemic and a low production fishing season best described as dismal.
But many salmon fishermen and businesses have found ways to pivot and re-invent their business model through community supported fisheries, dockside sales and on-line sales. At the BC Salmon Marketing Council, we have done the same by re-envisioning our marketing strategy in-season, to focus on what BC has to offer, support for local businesses and communities, and gratitude for our fishermen.
Through high quality photo and video from the fishing grounds we are capturing the story of BC’s inspiring salmon fishermen to share far and wide through our growing social media audience and online presence.
Our signature event, the Wild Salmon Celebration took a huge leap from a single event in Vancouver to a 3-day, 10-restaurant province-wide promotion where exciting Wild BC Salmon feature dishes sold out to enthusiastic crowds, generating great value for chefs, restaurants and suppliers.
Our recent campaign ‘Know Your Fishermen’ was met with genuine support from our growing audience. We will follow up on this success in the months to come with our ‘Taste of Wild BC’ and ‘Wild at Heart’ campaigns. Also in the works is a new marketing resource website where fishermen, processors, retailers and restaurants can access our ever-increasing library of high-quality marketing content and resources for their own use.
All of these initiatives enhance the value of BC wild salmon by building on our priority themes of local, artisanal, premium quality – Wild BC Salmon.
It has been an extraordinarily difficult year but fishermen’s resilience and business innovation will ensure that Wild BC Salmon is the consumers’ choice.