On a Kraken game night, the noise from the upper bowl and the ice are not the first things you notice when you walk through Climate Pledge Arena. It’s the aroma emanating from Fork & Fin, the Trident Seafoods marketplace hidden inside American Express Hall, where Wild Alaska Pollock is being seared, battered, and folded into tacos at a rate that ten years ago would have seemed unimaginable. Pollock was marketed as a headline protein in a hockey arena. It’s a little telling and a little surreal.
The nameless white fish inside the fast-food fillet and the anonymous flake in the frozen stick are two examples of how Wild Alaska Pollock has spent the majority of its commercial existence in the shadows of the seafood aisle. The industry is currently attempting to eradicate that subdued, nearly undetectable existence. Over the past few years, Seattle-based Trident Seafoods and the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers have put together something that resembles a long-game brand build rather than a marketing campaign, with food-bank pledges, sports partnerships, and sustainability claims all working together.
The figures being discussed are not modest. Trident intends to donate 32 million servings of seafood to SeaShare, a nonprofit organization in Seattle that provides food banks, by the year 2024. Approximately 29 million of those servings have already been recorded since 1994. It’s the type of person that a business likes to bring up in passing and then let sit in the room. The CEO of Trident, Joe Bundrant, presented it as a reference to the Kraken being the 32nd team in the NHL, which is the kind of neat narrative that marketers adore and skeptics usually find objectionable. Nevertheless, both the audience and the donations are genuine.
The timing of the pollock pitch is what makes it intriguing and possibly difficult to dispute. For years, the traditional protein industries—beef, pork, and dairy—have been on the defensive, fending off plant-based rivals whose entire strategy is based on guilt about the environment. By its own admission, Impossible Foods does not promote health.
It is marketing a reduced carbon footprint. Beef hasn’t managed to surpass that narrative. Whether on purpose or by accident, Pollock entered the same conversation with the majority of the correct cards already in hand. The fish is inexpensive, gentle, and versatile, and the fishery is renowned for being well-managed. It also has one of the lowest carbon footprints of any animal protein on Earth. It’s the uncommon protein that doesn’t have to defend itself.
Speaking with those in the field gives me the impression that they are aware that this window will not remain open indefinitely. GAPP’s CEO, Craig Morris, describes pollock in a manner similar to that of a brand manager discussing a product that is about to take off. Make it unique. Make it precise. Keep it from turning back into “some white fish.” The real concern is that, in the absence of a name and a narrative, pollock will be subtly replaced as soon as a lower-quality, less expensive whitefish shows up at a chain restaurant’s back door.
The strategy’s effectiveness is still up for debate. Consumer memory is short, and sports sponsorships are costly. By eliminating single-use plastics and achieving net-zero certification by 2024, Climate Pledge Arena will provide Pollock with a co-branded home that feels natural rather than forced. Coherence, however, is not conversion. In front of a freezer case in Boise, a fan enjoying a pollock taco in section 114 might or might not recall the species.
It’s difficult to ignore how different this moment feels from the slow defensive crouch the cattle industry has been in as you watch this play out. Almost defiantly, Pollock is playing offense. The question of whether America is prepared to refer to fish as its most reliable protein is still up for debate.
