Marketing Advertising Design Blog - Insight, News & Views of the mad.co.uk news

A fish called Colin?

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Design, Latest reporters' blogs, Jim Prior April 16th, 2009 by Jim Prior

Sainsbury's advertising I quite like the idea of a fish called Colin. He sounds more like a friend than a fish and I feel like I know him already. More than anything he’s a friend to the planet, to the wallet, and to cod. Don’t let the perceived superficiality of this idea mask the fact that it addresses a deep environmental issue. It’s a brilliant re-brand and it will certainly persuade some people to transfer their demand from unsustainable cod.

Just don’t expect anyone to pronounce it co-lan. He’s Colin, our friend, not a Euro-fish.

Colin is a friend for Dave, the TV channel, whose similar strategy proves that simple name changes can, indeed, bring about fundamental changes in perception. John Dory must be quivering his fins in fear.

Jim Prior is Managing Partner of The Partners

Comments icon (1)

Trackback icon (0)

Tags Sainsbury's Colin, Dave, TV Rebranding

Comments (1)

Matthew Byrne’s comment is....

Surely renaming the fish Colin suggests there’s a problem with the word Pollack (I’m not going to spell out what this rhymes with) rather than an environmental problem, so sending out a rather mixed message.

Although, any noise made around awareness of the plight of the cod is a good thing this does seem a bit misguided to me.

The best bit of publicity I’ve seen for the pollack was when Gordon Ramsay featured it as a sustainable alternative to cod on Kitchen Nightmares.

Posted April 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm

Your comment is....

You must be logged in to post a comment.

madcomments encourages comments to be short and to the point. Comments should show a courteous regard for the presence of other voices in the discussion. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments that do not adhere to this standard.