Between scaling down the agency and starting the kite tour, we created a campaign that helped revive the Cairns prawn trawling fleet.

It doubled the wholesale price of a prawn species in 3 months by increasing retail consumer demand and creating a brand.

For less than the cost of replacing an auxiliary engine on a single vessel, we helped the entire fleet return to viability.

The problem

Rising fuel and labour costs were putting huge pressures on the FNQ prawn trawler fleet.

The wholesale price of their product had plummeted due to the market flooding with imported Vannemai prawns.

The cheap prawn didn’t affect the prices of King Prawns or Tiger prawns as much because seen side by side with the Vannemai, there is an appreciable difference in size and colouration.

The Endeavour Prawn though, suffered for its looks.

Although it has sweet tasty meat, it’s not much to look at and the heads go black easily. Next to an imported prawn priced $10 per kilo less, you can forgive anyone for not buying them. Sure we all love to support Australian products, but people just couldn’t see the value in this one.

Unfortunately this species represented 60% of the catch for the Far North’s fleet. But we had an ace up our sleeve - in 2007 at a national conference in Adelaide, the Endeavour was voted the best tasting wild caught prawn in Australian waters.

Knowing the product could stand up to the promise made it very easy to believe in.

The process

Before we produced any creative, we wrote a marketing strategy and presented that to the Primary Industries Minister and the top 20 Queensland operators to secure the funding. When the funds arrived we produced the campaign to run over three months in the Cairns test market. As prawns in general had never been advertised before, it was a genuine chance to see the effect of advertising as the sole variable in  the marketing mix. To the right is some of the creative, which included POS, posters and press. You can view the TV commercial at the Endeavour Prawns website.

So, for a grand total of $80 000 the client received 4 press and magazine ads, 2 different POS posters, display cabinet stickers, food safe stands to identify the product in situ, a TVC, a website and a very healthy 3 month media schedule on TV, newspapers and in magazines.

The results?

The wholesale price for the 21-30 count prawns was around $4 when the campaign began. 3 months later that price had increased to $8-$9 in the market area. A genuine doubling of the wholesale price. The cold stocks from the previous year’s catch that went unsold were also cleared out. The success of the campaign made the news here.

To this day, people still walk into fishmongers in Cairns asking for the product by name. It has genuinely made the transition from species into brand.

But the Endeavour was only the beginning of the love affair between Adpower, prawns and any client connected to the ocean.

Today I handle the social media side of things for a Kitesurfing brand, a big wave surfer, a stand-up paddleboard company and of course, Queensland Prawns.