A $2-million-a-year investment by the state into a targeted lobster promotion effort paid off big for the industry last year, according to the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, which launched an aggressive campaign to boost soft-shell lobster sales.
Matt Jacobson, executive director at the collaborative, says a new report on the marketing campaign revealed that the initiative was responsible for 1 billion earned social media impressions — and some surprising new takes on serving lobsters.
“We are learning things about how the rest of the world views Maine lobster that I think are helpful for the industry,” he says. “For instance, we’re finding that the incidence of menuing Maine lobster with butter are going down and continuing to go down, and we are seeing some increases in flavor pairings around Asian tastes. So we’re seeing chefs do more with lobster.”
Jacobson says, in addition, lobster consumption was up last year.
“One of the things that’s interesting to us is the wholesale price data over the summer showed that we were tracking at the wholesale level, what restaurant owners have to buy lobster for was at a 10-year high right before Labor Day, so that’s a pretty good indication that demand is up really across the spectrum, internationally and domestically,” he says.
Jacobson says he will be filing a full report on the collaborative’s marketing activities with a legislative policy committee in the weeks ahead.