The creative “Savour the sea” campaign comes after a seven year period during which time the company had no television advertisement campaigns.

Sea Harvest Sales and Marketing Director, Konrad Geldenhuys, says, “As a company operating in the fishing industry that catches Cape Hake in the wild, we often feel misunderstood and underappreciated. Our sustainability credentials are evidence that we share our stakeholders’ concern about the sustainability of the natural resource and invest huge effort in not only responsibly extracting our fishing quota from the sea but in how we manage and operate our business.”

“This prompted us to try and communicate a particular message and change our old brand tagline from ‘We just do fish’ to ‘Savour the sea’. We wanted to show a glimpse of what it is like for our crew hard at work out there in the deep sea.” With wild caught Cape Hake, nets are cast up to 800 meters deep, 100 nautical miles out at sea and vessels and crew often have to endure very rough sea conditions with swells higher than six meters.”

Geldenhuys adds that catching and processing deep sea Cape Hake is highly capital and labour intensive and involves expensive trawling vessels, experienced crew, highly skilled staff and expert product and marketing strategies to ensure global competitiveness. “We operate in highly competitive markets, both in South Africa and internationally and continuously need to innovate and ensure that our products are of a premium quality to satisfy the demands of our customers and consumers, not only in terms of taste, but also convenience,” he says.

Established in Saldanha Bay in 1964, Sea Harvest has become synonymous with the rural West Coast town over the past 50 years. Its fishing operations remain a key source of livelihood for the local and surrounding communities, including Vredenburg, Velddrif and Hopefield.

Geldenhuys states, “Sea Harvest has played and still plays a large role in promoting the welfare of people in these communities and creating positive social change. We provide around 2400 jobs with maximum local beneficiation. This means that we don’t take the raw material and send it overseas for further processing; as a result of our added value processes, we derive maximum economic benefit in and for the West Coast and South Africa.”

“Most of our employees individually own 21 000 shares in the business, which amounts to a 5% of the company among all full time employees, via the Sea Harvest Employee Share Trust. Through the Sea Harvest Foundation, we have also invested millions of Rands in community empowerment projects during the last ten years.”

The TV ad, produced by Cape Town-based agency CRT create, was filmed over three days at sea on one of the company’s own vessels, the Harvest Bounty, and stars the company’s own sea-going crew working under normal operational conditions as opposed to professional actors, to provide an authentic feel of the conditions at sea, and to accurately reflect the effort of the catch. It is currently being aired on selected channels in South Africa for the next three months.

Click here to view the advert.

For more information on Sea Harvest, visit www.seaharvest.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.