~ Seaweed, how to mass-market? ~

The million-dollar answer is not in this Marketing Monday thought.
The interest & aspiration to find a solid answer is in this thought! 
Seaweed = promising
Seaweed has many fans, mostly in the 'seaweed bubble'
Seaweed bubble covers mainly the industry, mass market however not yet
Mass-market(ing) of seaweed is the main challenge today!
So…How to get majority of European consumers to seaweed?
How to change status-quo of this mass-market?
How to enrich European food patterns with seaweed

Through combination of various strategies or tactics like?

Through SILENT REVOLUTION, similar to the salt reduction the idea is that there is no explicit communication around the application of seaweed in the product. Only when the ingredient list is read one will find out the product contains seaweed in its recipe.

Through GROWTH OF NICHE SEGMENTS where seaweed has already a position for example sushi (customer base in Europe grown significantly = useful best practice).

There are numerous tasteful recipes/applications with seaweed in food products/patterns. Today these are niche segments, the question is if and how these proof-of-principle examples for niche segments can be expanded to the mass-market (segments)?

Could we learn from the dairy industry in the Netherlands to get SEAWEED IN THE FOOD-PATTERN OF CHILDREN through school progams. Could the seaweed industry tap into the discussion on school meals and work with parties that provide school meals?

PUSH & PULL MARKETING (see the marketing definition end of this post**) in this context aims at the pull marketing part. Pull marketing through market communication and brand building requires significant budgets and longer-term commitment by large food multinationals. This is however nothing new and concrete, smart ideas to achieve this lacking thus far.

Linking seaweed to popular INFLUENCERS THAT CREATE HYPES through social media like Tik-Tok could boost sales of seaweed. Despite the difficulty of steering such hypes it is questionable if it contributes to a structural increase of seaweed.

* Several co-operatives in the industry team up and discuss this challenge of mass-marketing seaweed to the European consumer @ NORTH SEA SEAWEED 2024 EVENT 3 October in The Hague https://lnkd.in/gebmFfP2

** Push & pull marketing means that the industry convince retailers and food service to include seaweed concepts into their assortment and at the same time convice consumers to buy these seaweed concepts and ask for it at the retailer