By Rick Stanton
As many of you know, my shop was the agency of record for the Washington Fryer Commission for nearly 20 years. Pat Cashman and I collaborated on some pretty silly—and sometimes downright funny—radio spots. And one that sparked some ominous overtones, as well.
Back in the ’90s (not sure exactly the years), there was a lot of publicity surrounding the plight of the local salmon runs. This included a bunch of finger pointing, with the fishing industry contending that there were a lot of salmon and everyone should just calm down and worry about things that really mattered.
Then there were the environmentalists, who blamed the fishing industry for over-fishing and industry in general for dumping crap into our waters and polluting the environment so egregiously that it would be lucky if anything survived, much less the salmon.
I got the brilliant idea that this was the perfect time to strike for my chicken account. The spot began, as all of them did, with Pat stating, in a rather pontifical tone, “Those of us at the Washington Fryer Commission (followed by—ready for this?) are very concerned about the salmon.”
I went on to note in the copy that it appeared their once-great numbers were falling, and while there are many ways to help them fight back, one way is to stop eating them. The spot also mentioned that you could fix our chicken in many of the same ways you might fix salmon and that you could eat our chicken without any regrets, because there were “a lot of our chickens.”
At the time, I knew this premise was completely absurd. Perhaps the salmon were being over-fished. I have no idea how things stood back then. But one day I get a phone call from some jerk at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (or whatever the hell they were called) and he was pretty upset. He proceeded to tell me, in somewhat threatening tones, that he and everyone else in the fishing industry were mad about the spot because it was misleading and was hurting their business.
My response was, “Good. That means we’re selling more chickens.” It went back and forth for a couple more minutes, until I essentially told him to go pound sand. Then I marched down to the media folks and told them to change the rotation on the Fryer Commission radio spots to 100% “Save the Salmon.”
A few days went by, and I got a call from the Seattle Times. Someone wanted to interview me about the spot and the conflict with the Alaskan seafood folks. During the interview, I took the stand that the spot was in fun, that the fishermen were taking it too seriously and that maybe they should hire us to help them grow their business.
Apparently, my point of view was lost on the salmon folks. After about a month of this bullshit, the Fryer Commission got an anonymous call stating that if we didn’t pull the spot that he knew where their offices were and bad things were going to start happening to cars and to people.
We pulled the spot. But, much like Donald Trump, if the Alaskan seafood people were telling the truth about their fishing morals, why did they have to threaten others when they were called into question?
That long-winded story leads me to today’s headlines. Restaurants—and now PCC—are stopping the sale of Chinook salmon in an attempt to help save the Orcas. This is a nice, feel-good, socially responsible brand play. In theory, it will help consumers like their brands and do more business with these thoughtful companies.
But the fact of the matter is that humans eating salmon and causing a shortage is like peeing into the ocean and worrying about rising tides. We may be at a point of no return with local Chinook salmon. And I place the blame on factories and other businesses pouring poison into our waters and air and a too-little-too-late understanding of the problems this was and is causing.
The salmon, like endangered amphibians, birds and other parts of life are just the inevitable victims. And we are somewhere in line to be next.
For now, I suppose, the Alaskan seafood folks’ side wins. And the salmon lose.
To listen to the “Save the Salmon” spot click on the link to my work and go to the “Golden Oldies” section, scroll down and you’ll see it.
https://apnews.com/5d4f007f66b94111977dbcac91a82bc3
http://stantonandnobody.com/portfolio/radio-2/
