Honey Smoked Fish Co.: "Finally Looking as Good as it Tastes?

Health & Happiness Advertising Agency LRXD has launched “Surprisingly, Honey Smoked Salmon,” its first creative work for client Honey Smoked Fish Company. The integrated media campaign includes digital video, OOH, display, and paid social (Facebook and Instagram) elements.

The creative focuses on the surprise element of the salmon’s full flavor, freshness and unique seasonings along with the brand’s snappy personality. In one 15-second video, a woman is asked what her greatest weakness is at a job interview. “Surprisingly,” she replies, “Honey Smoked Salmon”—as she pulls a pack out of her purse and slaps it on the interviewer’s desk. Instant hire. In the other, dad opens the door to his teenager’s room and quickly shuts it. “What did you see?” concerned mom asks. “Surprisingly, Honey Smoked Salmon,” he replies, confoundedly. Honey Smoked Salmon products are sold in supermarkets and online.

Out-of-home advertising also employs the tagline: “Surprisingly, Honey Smoked Salmon” is the antidote for billboards that read “For breakfast, lunch, dinner and super weird dessert” and “New flavors worth bragging about in 10ft type?” Initially, the outdoor work is running in the Denver-metro area; it will spread to additional cities in 2020.

“The Honey Smoked Fish Co. came to us as a brand with a past steeped in producing the highest-quality, never-frozen smoked salmon—and with a very quirky brand personality,” said creative director Andy Dutlinger. “Research taught us that there was a unanimous surprise amongst first time tryers related to how good it tasted. So, we used that insight to create a campaign that could ladder up beyond taste alone,” Dutlinger continued.

LRXD won the Honey Smoked Fish business after a pitch in 2018. It is the company’s Agency of Record.

LRXD recently created new packaging for Original Honey Smoked Fish and six other flavors in the product line: Garlic & Herb Salmon, Mango Habanero Salmon, Orange Ginger Salmon, Cracked Pepper Salmon, and Chipotle & Lime Salmon. The design delivers more product information to shoppers in a look that better captures attention and represents the brand’s personality, which is bold, modern, health-conscious, convenient, quirky, caring, authentic and a little bit weird. The brand’s POV is “Life at full flavor.”

The packaging pairs sea blue with a contrasting color for each SKU and features bold pronouncements about flavor, freshness and other qualities illustrated like vintage painted signs. “Freshness is our main ingredient,” each horizontally oriented package reads. “Well, that and cooked salmon.” And right smack in the middle is the sole illustration representing the big, bold, goofy personality of the brand—a smiling salmon.