One23West creates campaign for Aquamar to make seafood more approachable

Context

Aquamar aims to break down the barriers to enjoying high-quality seafood at home, recognizing that many people don’t want to handle raw seafood or know how to prepare it. It can be intimidating. A disruptive product line like this needed a disruptive campaign to help it  stand out from what people are used to seeing in the seafood category. This campaign celebrates seafood as an approachable, convenient option but also helps redefine the versatility of seafood for today’s busy consumer.

Methodology

For Aquamar’s ready-to-heat seafood products, One23West addressed a key challenge: many people find cooking seafood intimidating. Research revealed that consumers often see seafood as complicated and hard to fit into everyday meals. That insight inspired the concept of “Casual Seafood”—making seafood feel approachable, versatile and perfect for any occasion at home. This vision came to life through vibrant underwater visuals featuring people casually enjoying their meals in the ocean depths, surrounded by coral and fish. The imagery captivates and inspires, creating moments that would stop shoppers in their tracks. Emphasizing ease, Aquamar launched its new product line in grocery stores across Chicago, making seafood an exciting and effortless choice.

Process

The One23West team collaborated with L’Éloi and Les Garçons to create underwater visuals that were realistic, bold and vibrant. The idea was to present people going about their everyday routine—eating dinner in the kitchen, having lunch while working from home, relaxing in the living room—as if it’s totally normal to be in the middle of the ocean! To keep the photography as authentic as possible, they focused on shooting in-camera and building everything in the studio: sand, water reflection and even floating hair and clothes, which were done practically. These details made the scenes feel alive and believable. Finally, we combined it by compositing the shots with an infinite water backdrop. The whole project was such a blast. Our clients at Aquamar and production partners were just as excited as we were to create something fresh and unexpected.

Results

It's still early, but the initial media and sales results have been very strong. Aquamar has exceeded sales targets by 25% so far, and this campaign created a halo effect–seeing a 52% sales lift in existing products merchandised alongside this new line-up. Anecdotally the campaign has been very well received by consumers. Demo sampling in stores attracted large numbers of shoppers and resulted in sales lifts. Retailers have also gravitated towards this work, helping Aquamar with new listings in additional grocery stores.

We also had exceptionally high click through rates on our ads across all channels, which is great to see because one of our goals was to drive people to the store locator. We over-doubled the expected CTR in channels like Google Discovery, Performance Max and Paid Search, specifically.

Credits:

Agency: ONE23WEST

• Creative Directors: Jordan Hamer, Spencer Ryan
• Art Director: Marie Cermakova
• Writer: Rob Tarry
• Producer: Aliya Tamro
• Account team: Matt McGarva, Tiana Pazdirek, Amelie Roy

Production Company: L'ÉLOI

• Producer team: Sebastien Hotte, Kristina Kirilyuk, Margaux Arnal
• Art/Set Design team: Jean-François Clément, Sébastien Kelly, Brian Gray
• Food Stylists: Heidi Bronstein, Ian Mousseau
• Hair/Makeup team: Thomas Rousseau, Nicolas Côté, Jay Forest, Cristina Mendizabal

Photographer & Director: Les Garçons

• Photographers: David Rollins, Rob Lee
• Lighting & Digi Tech: Tom DiSandolo, Kalden Dhatsenpa, Frederik Robitaille

Post Production: Visual Box, Baillat

• Retouching (Visual Box): Gabriel Carbonneau, Lucas Bayzelon
• Animation (Baillat): Charles Spina, Jean-Sébastien Baillat, Luce Ruissy, Véronique Meloche