CASE STUDY
Marine Stewardship Council
Making choosing sustainability simple through an everyday awareness campaign
Challenge
Since its inception, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been on a global mission to end overfishing and secure our future seafood supply. Its blue fish ecolabel appears on tens of thousands of wild-caught seafood products worldwide, signifying they come from independently verified fisheries with environmentally sustainable fishing practices. With a focus on ocean health and accountability, the MSC has demonstrated unwavering dedication to its mission of protecting marine ecosystems for future generations.
Over the years, however, as the sustainability landscape grew increasingly crowded, the MSC faced a challenge: a noticeable change among its core consumer. This values-driven shopper was becoming more time-strapped while battling decision fatigue, skepticism around greenwashing, and an overwhelming flood of conflicting messaging. Common mental shortcuts that cue health and sustainability for protein—like ‘grass-fed’ and ‘cage-free—don’t exist in the seafood aisle, leaving shoppers to default to the fastest option rather than one more closely aligned with their values. MSC sought help from Prophet to reconnect with the conscious consumer and position their label as a relevant, trusted, and effortless solution in the seafood aisle.
Solution
To uncover the core drivers of today’s overwhelmed shopper, we embarked on a deep dive into consumer behavior. By conducting proprietary consumer research across the United States, we gained a profound understanding of MSC’s target audience and their evolving mindset. We identified a critical tension: consumers distrust vague sustainability claims but still deeply want their purchases to reflect their values.
From there, we explored the specific anxieties present in the seafood category. We learned that shoppers face unique challenges with seafood—heightened anxiety around safety, sourcing, and quality—with less familiarity of universal in-aisle heuristics to guide them. This lent valuable insights into the target audience and the unique role MSC should play in the aisle. The takeaway was clear: what today’s shopper needs is not more information, but a simple, no-regrets option.
Through strategic collaboration, we crafted a compelling creative platform that reflects the MSC’s credible heritage and what the organization needs to be in the future. We anchored this platform with a bold promise: “See the Label. Know You’re Good.” This repositioned the MSC blue fish from a complex environmental badge to an intuitive symbol akin to a green walk sign that allows shoppers to confirm their choice and move forward with total confidence.
We then distilled this strategy into a clear, market-ready activation plan driven by three core principles:
- Meeting consumers where they are
- Building small, reliable habits
- Restoring a sense of purchasing control
With a refined creative concept, we translated the platform into a playbook for market activation. We served in an advisory capacity as the MSC and its partners developed final executions for a four-week integrated push. Spanning out-of-home advertising, in-store placements, and digital channels, this comprehensive rollout brought the strategy to life for the everyday shopper without relying on doom-and-gloom environmentalism.
Images and video provided by Marine Stewardship Council, in collaboration with Joel Pylypiw (art director), Nick Ghattas (photographer), Christina Frantzis (stylist) and Intersection.
Results
Armed with a research-grounded creative platform built to flex across global markets, the MSC successfully launched the “See the Label. Know You’re Good” campaign during Earth Month 2026. The organization activated the brand externally through an integrated, multi-channel rollout with leading outdoor media companies in the US and Canada, in major retailers like Loblaw, Empire, and Metro, and digital placements across Meta, YouTube, Instacart, and Spotify.
Furthermore, the MSC extended the campaign’s reach directly into trusted, community-level conversations through influencer partnerships with chefs and nutritionists. The MSC now possesses a reusable strategic asset to drive meaningful, ongoing consumer engagement far beyond a single campaign, effectively turning sustainability into an effortless everyday habit.
Meaningful impact happens when we align a clear vision with human behavior. By grounding our strategy in genuine consumer tensions, we gave MSC a platform that cuts through the noise, elevates brand relevance, and helps consumers shop confidently for certified sustainable seafood.
“We now have renewed clarity and understanding of our target consumer and how to reach them with a resonant message, shaping the direction of our consumer engagement campaigns moving forward. Prophet brought clear, actionable insights and creative that moved our brand forward, while still feeling like us.”
Kristen Stevens
Senior Marketing Manager, USA
Marine Stewardship Council