How Fishwife Made Tinned Fish Feel Sexy

Sometimes the smartest brand move is not creating something new, but changing what it means.

In this episode of Full Fat Marketing, Leonora breaks down how Fishwife managed to make tinned fish feel chic, desirable, and culturally relevant. 

If you’ve ever wondered how certain products become cool while others stay forgettable, this episode will show you why desirability often matters far more than utility. 

⭐ If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and review, it helps more founders discover the show.

And if you’re building a food, drink or hospitality brand and want help applying these strategies to your business, feel free to reach out at leonora@lrbcreative.com

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Disclaimer: Insights shared are based on Leonora’s experience with food and hospitality brands and are for educational purposes only. Results may vary.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There is no universe in which tin fish should be chic, and yet Fishwife somehow made it feel like a personality trait, which honestly is borderline outrageous. How do you take something most people associated with, like a dusty cupboard, a bit of a sad lunch, or something their dad eats standing over the kitchen sink, and turn it into a brand people are genuinely excited to be seen buying? That is not a case of nice packaging, that is a proper branding flex. I'm Lenora and this is the Full Fat Marketing Podcast, where you'll hear the uncomfortable strategy truths for FB brands that most people won't tell you, but I will. Now, what makes Fishwife so interesting is that this is not really a seafood story. It's a status, identity, and taste story, and a masterclass in marketing. That is the real thing going on here. The product itself was not necessarily the problem. Tinned fish already existed. It was already edible, it was already useful, it already had a place in people's kitchens. The real issue was this: who does this product feel like it belongs to? And this is such a useful branding question, and so many times it's overlooked. Honestly, I think a lot of founders miss how powerful it actually is. Fishwife understood that the opportunity was not to make tinned fish more practical, it was to make it feel more desirable. And that's a completely different game. A practical product gets bought when needed, a desirable product gets chosen, shown off, gifted about, talked about, and built into identity. And that's where the moneymaker is. That's exactly what Fishwife did. They changed the type of person Tinned Fish felt like it belonged to. Suddenly it no longer felt like a pantry filler, an emergency protein, or something you quietly keep in the back of the cupboard for a rainy day. Now it felt like something you'd bring to a dinner party, or something you'd keep visible in your kitchen, something you'd even put on a grazing board, something you'd buy partly because it made you feel like you had really good taste, and that shift is where the power is. Now, if you're listening to this as a founder or marketing manager, this is where the real value starts. If you want to understand how they nailed this, there are a few things worth really paying attention to. Number one, they understood that low status categories are often where the biggest opportunities are. That is such an important lesson, and please listen to that again. A lot of brands want to launch into categories that already feel sexy. We're speaking about matcha, functional drinks, luxury hotels, anything that already has built-in aspiration. And that's the obvious route. But the less obvious route, and often the smarter one, is finding a category that still feels a bit overlooked, whether that be a bit flat or a bit uncool, and asking how do we make this more socially desirable? That is a much more powerful question. And honestly, it's where a lot of white space lives. Because if no one has emotionally upgraded the category yet, there is far more room to own that shift. And that is exactly what Fishwife did. Number two, they did not just make the product look nice, they changed the entire context around it. This is where a lot of people oversimplify branding. They think, oh, it's just good packaging. No, good packaging on its own does not create that level of obsession or cult-like following. What matters is the world the product now belongs in, and Fishwife placed tin fish into a completely different visual and cultural environment. Now it lives in the same kind of world as wine nights or host gifts or design conscious kitchens. And that really matters because products do not get judged in isolation. They get judged by the company they keep. That is such a useful thing to understand. If your brand is sitting in the wrong context, it can feel far less desirable than it actually is. And Fishwife really changed that context and they changed that perception. Number three, they made the product socially easy. This one is massive. A lot of products fail to spread, not because they are bad, but because people do not feel socially confident around them. They don't really know how to serve it, they don't know how to talk about it, or even gift it, or even recommend it to their friends. There's way too much friction. Fishwife made tin fish feel easy to socially use, and that matters so much more than people realize. If a product feels socially easy, it moves and flies off the shelf way faster. It gets brought up by friends, it gets posted organically, it gets gifted, it gets pulled into conversation very quickly. That is when a product stops behaving like stock in a cupboard and starts behaving like culture. And they were really, really clever about this as well, because more and more people were starting to just put them on the shelves in their kitchen. And when they'd have friends over, the friends would be like, oh my gosh, what is that? And then the whole conversation would start. So they made something that almost looked like a piece of art. And that is a completely different level of growth. And number four, they sold taste, not just food. And this is probably the biggest lesson in this whole thing. People love to think they buy products rationally. They don't. A lot of the time they're buying a feeling or a version of themselves or a tiny piece of identity they can fold into everyday life. And Fishwife tapped into that beautifully. Buying it didn't just feel like, oh, I bought fish. It feels more I have good taste and tinned fish, which is almost a ridiculous thing to pull off as a brand, but also a complete gold mine. It feels more like this is a really powerful emotional payoff, and it is one that a lot of brands miss completely. They keep trying to sell quality, ingredients, features, function, but what actually drives desire is often much more emotional and socially coded than that. That is why some brands feel really magnetic and others feel a bit forgettable. One is selling utility, the other is selling a better-feeling version of the customer. That is a much stronger place to build from. So if you're a founder, marketing manager, or someone trying to build a brand that people really care about, here is the practical takeaway. Ask yourself this. What are we currently selling as useful that could actually be sold as desirable? It's such a good question. And then from there, ask yourself what would need to change for this to feel more like taste, status, identity, or belonging? And that's where the real work starts. Not always in launching a new product or a new platform or more content. Sometimes the biggest growth more available to you is simply changing what your product means in the customer's life. And that's what Fishwife did. They did not just make tinned fish look better. I want to make that really clear. They made it feel like something more culturally aware, design conscious, food savvy person would naturally have an implement in their world. And that's a very different thing and a very valuable one. So, no, Fishwife did not just sell tin food, it sold really good taste. Now that's the Full Fat version. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, you can listen to Full Fat Marketing Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, with new bite-sized episodes being released daily, Monday to Friday. You can thank me later for that. Oh, and if you're enjoying the podcast, I'd really love and appreciate it if you left a review as it helps more people find it. Thank you so much, have a fab weekend, and I'll see you next week.