Tuna brand Safcol has claimed the confronting Greenpeace push against John West is benefiting the brand, despite the fact its latest campaign has nothing to do with Greenpeace or John West.
John West has faced harsh criticism this week following a campaign spearheaded by environmental organisation Greenpeace. The campaign parodied John West's 'Best Your Best' positioning and aimed to expose its detrimental use of fishing aggregated devices (FADs).
Safcol's latest campaign, 'The Seafood Experts', championed its sustainable fishing methods and highlighted the harmful devices other brands use. The spot launched the same day as John West's 'Best Your Best' push and has run across social media and television.
Safcol marketing manager Deane DeVilliers told AdNews: "We had our campaign running two weeks before Greenpeace launched its campaign. Obviously Greenpeace's campaign helps us because we want people to buy our brand, but our campaign has nothing to do with John West or Greenpeace.
"We work with Greenpeace on sustainability because we want to get it right, but aren't aligned with it. We made a decision about a year ago to get it right and that became our unique positioning.
"Its campaign is a lot more hard-hitting than ours but good because it has bigger resources [in terms of reach]. You'd expect it to do the right thing."
Regarding the controversy John West is facing, DeVilliers said: "I think Greenpeace would have spoken to all the suppliers to do its tuna ranking report, and John West obviously wasn't doing what it wanted it do do".
John West was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.
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