Verlasso teaming with organic wine maker in major marketing push
Campaign will include retail, food show events with Bonterra wines.
Aquachile's Verlasso salmon brand is launching a marketing partnership with Bonterra Organic Vineyards of Mendocino County, California.
Bonterra is known as a leading producer of organic wines, which have been widely available in the United States since 1987.
Bonterra wines and Verlasso salmon share similar philosophies regarding responsible farming practices, Rachel Newman, senior brand manager for Bonterra, told IntraFish.
"Bonterra is based on organic farming, so responsible farming is incredibly important to us," said Newman. "Having alignment with Verlasso's philosophy of farming is really ideal for us. There are so many synergies between the two brands, and we really hope consumers identify those synergies."
AquaChile crafting new vision for Verlasso salmonBonterra has never done a co-marketing campaign with seafood, she said. "This is definitely new ground for us, so we're really excited about it."
On Tuesday, to kick off the marketing partnership, Verlasso and Bonterra took part in the production of a content shoot that included video, photography, recipes and tips.
Both video and photographic content for the entire year was produced, specifically to support the collaborative social media, event and retail campaign.
In the coming months, promotions with select retailers nationwide with Bonterra wines and Verlasso salmon will debut.
Is your seafood demo a dud? Here’s how to fix it fastLobby displays, hang tags on the bottle necks, tastings, store promotions and in-store events will all be a part of this year-long collaboration.
"We want to make sure that there is an opportunity for us to bring the campaign to life," said Newman. "Having a secondary display space, so maybe bringing the wine outside the wine aisle and driving consumers to the fish counter and really encouraging a high level of consumer engagement with both the wine and the salmon in-store."
And while the majority of the campaign now will be focused on retail, foodservice will also play a part, said Jennifer Bushman of Route to Market, which offers comprehensive retail and product development and marketing services. Route to Market is working with Verlasso on its branding and marketing efforts.
"Where Bonterra has a lot of bandwidth and where Verlasso isn't, it brings Verlasso into a new market opportunity and vice versa," she said.
Limited-time menu offers that link Verlasso salmon with Bonterra will be part of the campaign, she said.
Additionally, the marketing effort will be featured at the Taste of the Derby at the Kentucky Derby, Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, Sip of the Sea as well as additional Bonterra and Verlasso events throughout 2017.
Social media marketing will also play a big role in the campaign.
"We're really focusing on video in a big way so that people can see the food and wine coming to life and imagine how they might be able to do something similar or be inspired by what we're doing," Newman said.
A series of "10-second tips" videos will demonstrate, for example, how to pair wine and fish, how to grill fish and how to select fish, she said.
"So it's really accessible, digestible pieces of information for people to engage with in a brief nutshell, essentially, which is the way we are finding consumers really engage on social media platforms," Bushman said.
"The lesson here is that what you're always looking for is that true familial relationship when you're looking at co-branding promotion, and that's what we have. It is collaborative, it's all of those pieces you hope for so that one goes hand in hand with the other."
Verlasso's GM and his wine connection
Earlier this year, Verlasso named a new general manager, Moises del Rio.
Verlasso walking away from GM yeast feeddel Río is overseeing logistics, sales, market introductions and customer relationships. He was previously responsible for opening and growing distribution in Africa and the Middle East for Viña Concha y Toro, a leading global wine producer and owner of Bonterra.
Verlasso kicked off 2017 by striking a deal with the Albertsons-owned Acme supermarket chain, which operates 179 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Connecticut and Maryland.
Verlasso salmon burst onto the scene in 2011 touting a revolutionary new feed that utilized a DuPont-developed, genetically modified yeast, the cornerstone of the brand’s launch and central to its marketing and brand identity since that time.
The yeast ingredient, which accounted for about 10 percent of the feed recipe, replaced a large portion of the protein and omega-3 fatty acids typically provided by fishmeal and fish oil. This allowed the company to market its salmon with a favorable 1:1 fish-in-fish-out (FIFO) ratio, perceived by many buyers as an indicator of sustainability.
The yeast is gone now and has been replaced by an algae component that provides the omega-3s and allows the fish to maintain its 1:1 FIFO ratio.
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