Secret Island

Reeling in an American consumer audience for an established Chilean salmon supplier

Quick Facts

Overview

Chilean company Salmones Austral has produced, processed, and exported Atlantic and Coho salmon for hotels and restaurants in Chile for over 25 years. Now, it plans to launch a DTC brand to American consumers.

Core Activities

Stakeholder Interviews — Market Research — Competitive & Industry Analysis — User Personas — Sitemapping — Information Architecture — Wireframe Sketching — Naming — Brand Strategy

The Challenge

Chilean salmon company Salmones Austral has served a B2B audience of hotels and restaurants in Chile for over 25 years. When Covid-19 hit, they sought to cast a wider net.

It’s no secret that the pandemic hit the hospitality and restaurant industries hard. But Salmones Austral had a plan: why not cut out the middleman, and reach the consumer directly?

Market trends were steadily proving that American consumers would pay top dollar for quality fish, and millennials enjoyed doing so online, rather than from a grocery store or fishmonger.

The ask was no small fry: create a direct-to-consumer salmon brand for the American millennial, complete with a new name, identity, packaging, and ecommerce website.

Key Issues

↪︎ No brand presence in the U.S.

↪︎ Lacking a name that Americans can pronounce (and spell)

↪︎ Need an online store to sell their salmon

The Solution

Meet Secret Island: a direct-to-consumer salmon brand that champions its Chilean culture and speaks directly to its target user, the “Friendly Foodie.”

In order to uncover what would be known as Secret Island Salmon, my role as lead UX strategist was to understand the American audience, conduct thorough competitive and industry research, and leverage that research to construct a brand identity and website.

Key Objectives

↪︎ Brainstorm a name and personality for the new brand

↪︎ Articulate mission, vision, values, promise, tagline, and key messages

↪︎ Architect an ecommerce website that sold fish (of course) and told the brand story

Finding The Name

In our brainstorm sessions, we followed a naming framework that helped us consider different types of names.

Descriptive names, geographic names, personification, derivative names, neologisms, hybrid names, acronyms, alliterations, latinates, and more. The following is a sampling of names we came up with:

Sana Fish Co. (S.A.N.A. Salmones Austral North America)

Coast to Counter

Fin Direct

Pura Pisces

Atlas Fish

Puerto Montt Provisions

Pura Provisions

Pelago Provisions

42South Seafood

Pincoya Provisions

Silver Siren Foods

3Sirens Seafood

Siren of the Sea

Spirit of the Sea

Mythical Fish

Dancing Mermaid

Folklore Fish Co.

Goldie’s Seafood

Although many of them sounded good, they weren’t resonating.

That is, until we discovered the island of Chiloé, an island off the west coast of Chile where Salmones Austral’s fishing operations were based. Steeped in mythology and legends, we landed on Secret Island Salmon, a name that evokes something distinctly Chilean, distinctly Chilotan.

*Images 1 & 3: Packaging, photography, and food styling done by third parties.*

*Identity design by Courtney Lord at 829 Studios.*

Creating The Brand

With Chilotan mythology as part of our brand story, and our target audience identified, the rest of the brand identity fell into place.

Through market research, we crafted a user persona that we coined “The Friendly Foodie”. The Friendly Foodie represents the outgoing millennial that always seems to know the latest trends in health, wellbeing, and happiness. Fun, positive, and social, the Friendly Foodie cares a lot about living their best life, and therefore, eating the best food. A frequent dinner party host, they care about quality, aesthetics, and being an ethical shopper.

Understanding our target audience allowed us to hone in on the remaining puzzle pieces of the Secret Island Salmon brand:

MISSION —
To deliver extraordinary seafood

VISION —
A world where sustainable seafood is accessible to all

VALUES —
Quality. Sustainability. Community.

PERSONALITY —
Approachable. Intelligent. Sophisticated. Lifestyle-oriented.

TAGLINE —
The stuff of legends

Wrapping It All Together With a Website

With the name and brand ready to go, we used WooCommerce to build the ecommerce store.

During the information architecture phase, some of the core components and functions I proposed were:

↪︎ A recipes archive that allowed the user to filter by course (breakfast, lunch, dinner), method (baked, grilled, poached), diet & lifestyle, prep time, and cuisine. This would resonate with our “Friendly Foodie” user persona as well as draw in organic traffic.

↪︎ Certification badges and similar call-outs on the product profiles, such as “Kosher Certified”, “BAP Certified”, “Gluten & GMO Free”. These reinforced Secret Island’s dedication to quality and sustainability, and gave peace of mind to informed, ethical shoppers.

↪︎ Additional brand-building elements, such as an “About” section with pages for “Our Story,” “Sustainability,” and “Health Benefits”; and a homepage that highlights the brand’s core values (Quality. Sustainability. Community.) and real customer testimonials.

The end result is a well-functioning online store that instills consumer confidence through great design, strong brand messaging, and archives for products and recipes that enables Secret Island to grow their offerings and attract more customers.