So Long Stinky

Sometimes things backfire. Sometimes you haven’t thought things through. Sometimes you wish you could go back to bed and start the day again. I wonder if that’s what’s going through the minds of the folks at the WWF who thought up the Stinky Fish campaign. Stinky was a puppet that harangued fish-eating members of the public in a number of viral video campaigns that were supposed to alert people of the dangers of eating unsustainable fish. One video even concluded with the puppet informing viewers to look for the Marine Stewardship Council label when buying fish as “everything else is stinky.”

When the campaign was launched on Thursday 17 January, Giles Bartlett, Fisheries Policy Officer at WWF-UK said: "Overfishing is the single biggest threat to our oceans. It is vital that consumers have much better information to help them choose which fish to buy. WWF's new 'Stinky Fish' website will provide exactly that.”

Unfortunately for the WWF and MSC Stinky did not go down well. Seafish, the UK’s statutory body attacked the campaign for using “misleading, inaccurate and out of date information while the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO) immediately slammed the WWF for "confusing, rather than educating" consumers. Not even a week after the campaigns launched MSC removed itself from the controversy and disassociated itself from Stinky. Then on Saturday the puppet found himself tossed back to the sea. WWF removed the videos from the Stinky site where the little blue fellow now admits, “There's been quite a bit of fuss over me recently. In fact, I seem to have stirred up quite a stink!” Surely part of the problem had to be the name. Stinky Fish? As in smelly, not very appetising fish? The number one rule in marketing; Don’t remind people of your products’ worst aspect.

So bye bye Stinky. Your heart was in the right place, but that’s probably not enough to get you off the hook just yet. Don’t worry though, if you’re still interested in finding out what fish are ok to eat and which you should avoid then you can search the MSC’s sustainable fish lists here.