10 Cast Net: Alaska Lobster

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Alaska Lobster

The national seafood chain Red Lobster is airing a picturesque new television commercial featuring an Alaska crabber who lives in Washington state, a fishing boat that's registered in Washington state, and gorgeous Alaska tanner caught using crab-pot sized loopholes in Alaska law. The theme of the campaign is "Sea food differently." Tor Myhren, president and chief creative officer at the advertising firm Grey New York, told The New York Times that the intent of Red Lobster's new campaign was to "prove that authenticity (of Red Lobster) by showing the real people, the real places, with real dialogue that is not scripted." The dialogue might not be scripted, and the crabber featured does indeed fish in Alaska waters for a living, but it appears everything else was. The setting was staged amid green, lush, coastal rain forest and tidewater glaciers -- far from the treeless, glacier-less Bering Sea where most Alaska crab is caught. And the way the crab were caught -- by "sport fishing" -- bears no relation to the way crab is commercially harvested for the chain.