The BC Salmon Farmers Association (BCSFA) is swimming upstream with a new ad campaign and website that attempts to debunk myths about farmed salmon.

The industry organization is trying to reverse the tide of negative information surrounding the conversation on salmon farming, Mary Ellen Walling, executive director, BCSFA, tells MiC.

‘Our communications hadn’t kept pace with the advancements we’d made in terms of our people and technology, so we really needed to focus on that side of things,’ she says.

OMD in Vancouver handled the media while DDB Canada’s Vancouver office developed the website, social media campaign, TV and print ads.

The site features videos, text, links to articles and a forum where visitors can ask questions or make comments. There are also links to the campaign’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.

The ads are appearing in print in the Victoria Times Colonist, the Province, the Vancouver Sun and several regional papers, and on-air on Global, CTV and CBC.

The TV creative shows people believing the unbelievable, such as an email from someone from a foreign country offering millions of dollars to help get cash out of the country. The spots end with, ‘Imagine we believed everything we heard, the way we do about farmed salmon.’

The placement of the ads is meant to reach out to communities that don’t have much contact with the salmon-farming industry, which is concentrated in rural Vancouver Island and along the Sunshine Coast, away from urban populations of Victoria and Vancouver.

The campaign runs to the end of winter.

Correction: The original version of this article mistakenly attributed media duties on this campaign to DDB Canada when in fact it was OMD Vancouver. Media in Canada regrets the error.