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Fishwife

a campaign that makes tinned fish the main character

Digital MarketingStrategyCreativeSocialPaid mediaMeasurement
Brand
Fishwife, Los Angeles
Discipline
Digital & social campaign
Our role
Strategy, creative, content system, media plan
Timeline (concept)
4-week launch flight

01 · The brief

Tinned fish has a fan club. We want it to have a lunch hour.

Fishwife is a Los Angeles tinned-seafood brand, founded by Becca Millstein and Caroline Goldfarb and launched in December 2020. It sells premium, responsibly sourced fish in illustrated tins, packed by six canneries in Washington State, Spain, Denmark and Scotland. Its stated mission is to make tinned seafood “a staple in every cupboard.”

Dec 2020
Launched in Los Angeles
$350k
Shark Tank deal (Jan 2024) for 6% plus 2% advisory shares
$2.6M
Revenue in 2022, up from $750k in 2021, as disclosed on Shark Tank
NOSH ’24
Best of 2024: Best Marketing Campaign
2024
Whole Foods, nationwide (from April)
Feb 2025
The Fishwife Cookbook, 80 recipes

Design problems we chose

  1. 01

    From special to staple

    The tin is loved as a snack-plate, hosting and gifting item. Those moments happen a few times a month. Lunch happens five times a week.

  2. 02

    Give the shelf a reason

    With national grocery distribution, every tin now competes in the lunch basket. Shoppers need a cue to pick one up on a Tuesday.

  3. 03

    Scale the world, keep the hand

    More creators, more posts, more stores, without diluting the hand-drawn, maximalist world that made people notice the brand.

Our goal

Make 12:30 on a weekday the moment people reach for a tin.

02 · Insight & audience

People already love the tin. They just save it for company.

Our insight comes from how the category is talked about (snack plates, “girl dinner”, gifting), not from client data. It’s a hypothesis we’d validate with social listening and a short survey before launch.

Tension

Tinned fish is having a cultural moment, but mostly as a special-occasion food: boards, parties, gifts.

Truth

The things people love about it (no cooking, no fridge, real protein, a pretty object) are exactly what a weekday desk lunch lacks.

Opportunity

Don’t sell a new product. Give an existing love a new time slot, and make that time impossible to forget.

Who we’re talking to

Personas are NUUKE research assumptions built from the brand’s public audience, not real customers.

03 · Strategy

One ritual, four jobs.

We mapped the ritual onto a simple funnel: own the moment → prove the meal → be on the shelf → make it weekly. Click a stage to see its channels, content formats and KPIs.

Tap a stage · arrow keys work too

Stage 1 · Awareness · Snack-plate Sofia and her feed

Make “12:30 on a weekday” mean “open a tin”, before anyone has tasted one.

Channels

  • TikTok & Reels creators
  • Paid social (lunch-hour dayparting)
  • OOH near office districts in LA & NYC
  • PR: the Tin O’Clock “alarm” drop

Content formats

  • 12:30 alarm stunt video
  • 15-sec recipe-in-a-tin
  • Postcard billboards

KPIs we’d watch

  • Reach & 3-sec view rate in lunch hours
  • Branded search for “tin o’clock”
  • Ad recall (brand-lift study)

04 · The big idea

Tin O’Clock.

We explored three creative territories before landing on a weekday ritual with a time on it. Then we wrote the manifesto. Scroll through it.

Territory 1

Conservas Club

A members’ club for European-style tinned-fish evenings.

Loved by Sofia, but it doubles down on the evening occasion we want to grow beyond.

Territory 2

The Tin Is the Plate

Zero-dish meals: open, eat, done.

A great proof point, not a platform. It became a line in the manifesto.

Territory 3 · chosen

Tin O’Clock

A weekday ritual with a time on it: 12:30.

It owns a moment that repeats five times a week and reads on every surface. Chosen.

01

Owns a time, not a mood

“Snack plate” is a vibe; 12:30 is an appointment. A time is easier to remember and easier to repeat.

02

A cue five days a week

Habits need triggers. The alarm, the posting schedule and the dayparted ads all point at the same minute.

03

Reads on every surface

A clock works on a phone, a billboard, a shelf wobbler and a text message. The idea survives any format.

05 · The 3D tin

One tin, built to be filmed.

Every ritual has an object. We designed a limited Tin O’Clock label (original NUUKE folk illustration, not Fishwife’s packaging art) and built it in 3D, so one asset can feed paid, social and retail. Scroll to peel the lid, drag to spin, switch flavours.

  1. 01 · ClosedA tin worth giftingAn original folk-illustrated limited label: our concept sleeve for the campaign. Every flavour gets one colour family.
  2. 02 · Ring upThe ritual starts with a clickThe pull-ring moment is the campaign’s sound: the first beat of every Tin O’Clock video.
  3. 03 · OpenLunch is servedNo fridge, no prep, no plate. The tin is the plate. That’s the whole weekday promise.

Flavour · recolours the label

Smoked Atlantic Salmon

Scroll to peel · drag to spin

06 · Creative concepts

Five posts, made for thumbs.

Tap through the concepts as vertical stories. Switch between Storyboard, Animatic and Final to see how each post develops, from shot notes to finished motion.

Final: colour, motion and copy as they’d ship.

Hook (first 2 seconds)
A timer starts at 0:30 in the first frame.
Call to action
Save for tomorrow’s lunch
Made for
Protein Pete
Why it works
Speed is the objection. A visible countdown answers it before anyone asks.
Fishwife · concept post

30-second lunch

Lunch ✓
  1. Rice
  2. Tin
  3. Chili crisp
  4. Eat

Leftover rice + one tin + chili crisp. Done before your coffee cools.

Save for tomorrow’s lunch1 · Timer on screen from frame one2 · Tin tips in, flakes drop3 · Steps tick off as we go

Before · 12:29

sad desk sandwich

After · 12:30

Tin O’Clock ✶

Desk lunch, glowed up. No kitchen required.

Show us your desk lunch1 · Hold on the sad sandwich (1s)2 · Hard wipe on the ring-pull sound3 · Hand-drawn sticker lands

Tuesday

TIN O’CLOCK
It’s 12:30. Your tin is waiting.now
Snooze till tomorrowOpen tin

Set it once. Lunch rings every weekday at 12:30.

Set your Tin O’Clock alarm1 · 12:29 flips to 12:302 · Banner drops with the ring sound3 · Opt-in SMS sticker (story CTA)

Where your lunch comes from

Washington StateSpainDenmarkScotland

6 canneries, 4 places.

  • Fish from MSC/ASC-certified fisheries and farms, or Fishery Improvement Projects.
  • Salmon from Kvarøy Arctic, which Fishwife describes as 100% traceable.
Read the sourcing story1 · Postcard frame, not a spreadsheet2 · Route draws, stamps land one by one3 · Facts only from the brand’s own claims

Duet

POV: it’s 12:30@creator
sardines on toast, go@you

Duet your Tin O’Clock. Same tin, two desks.

Duet this with your tin1 · Left: creator sets the prompt2 · Right: blank for the duet3 · Reactions float up

Tap right for next, left to go back · hold to pause · ← → keys

07 · Creator kit

A brief creators actually want to read.

Creators bring real desks and real hands. The kit keeps every post on-ritual: one card, a bank of hooks, and clear rules.

Creator brief · Wave 1

Show us your Tin O’Clock.

One weekday lunch, one tin, under 30 seconds. Make it look like the best part of your workday, because it is.

Deliverables
1 × vertical video (20–30 s)
3 × story frames
Raw clips for paid usage (with consent)
Mandatories
Ring-pull in the first 2 seconds
A clock reading 12:30 in shot
Hand-written “Tin O’Clock” sticker
Tag & sound
#TinOClock · the 12:30 alarm sound
Duet-friendly ending (leave space)
Approvals
Script outline → rough cut → final.
Claims checked against the fact sheet.

Need a hook?

“It’s 12:30 and I have exactly 30 seconds.”

Do

  • Film at a real desk, in real light, at lunchtime.
  • Open the tin on camera; the ring-pull sound is the hook.
  • Keep it under 30 seconds and say the flavour out loud.
  • Show the tin as the plate. No extra dishes needed.
  • Label every paid post clearly (#ad / paid partnership).

Don’t

  • Make health, nutrition or sustainability claims beyond the approved fact sheet.
  • Stage a kitchen you don’t have. The desk is the point.
  • Hide the tin behind props or other brands.
  • Script fake reviews, “results” or before/after body claims.
  • Post the Tin O’Clock content outside the lunch window.

The kit protects the illustrated world: creators bring the real desk and real hands; the brand brings the colour, lettering and the tin.

Campaign look

Colour tokens · click to copy

Type scale

  • LetteringTin O’ClockHand-lettered per asset · Georgia italic as layout stand-in
  • HeadlineOPEN A TIN.Montserrat 900 · tight
  • BodyLunch in 30 seconds. No fridge, no prep.Inter 400 · 16/24
  • LabelWEEKDAYS · 12:30Inter 700 · 12 · +0.14em

Hex values are our working approximation of Fishwife’s saturated, one-colour-per-flavour palette; no official values are published. All lettering and illustration on this page are NUUKE originals.

09 · Content calendar

Four weeks of lunch.

The first month, day by day. Click any day to preview the post; use the legend to highlight one channel.

MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
W1The alarm goes off
W2Lunch, solved
W3Where it comes from
W4On the shelf

Weekday posts are scheduled for 11:45–12:30 local time, so the content lands just before lunch. Weekends recap and prep the week.

10 · Retail & OOH

Off the feed, onto the street and the shelf.

Retail is where the habit becomes a purchase. The billboard borrows the brand’s vintage-postcard tone; the shelf takeover turns the tinned-fish set into the lunch aisle. Switch headlines, go to night view, and tap the numbered hotspots.

12:30Greetings fromTIN O’CLOCKTIN O’CLOCKWeekdays · 12:30 · find us in the tinned-fish aisle

Billboard mock. Board copy is our concept; we’d place it near office districts and lunch spots.

11 · Budget & measurement

Where the money goes, and how we’d know.

Pick a preset or drag the sliders to see how the mix shifts. Below are the measures we’d agree before launch. They are expectations, not results.

Big first fortnight: OOH and creators create the moment.

Fuel the duet chain and recipe shorts
Daypart to 11:00–13:30, run the A/B tests
Shelf takeover, wobblers, retail media
Postcard billboards and the lunch pop-up
The 12:30 nudge, recipe hub, club
Office lunch drops: tins + forks
Share of working budget by channel

Shares of working media, normalised to 100%. Illustrative: the total budget is set with the client.

What we’d measure

KPI 01

Weekday-lunch purchase share

We expect: A rising share of orders and scans lands Monday to Friday, 11:00–14:00, against a pre-campaign baseline.

How we’d measure: DTC order timestamps plus retailer and receipt-panel data by daypart.

KPI 02

Saves & shares rate

We expect: Recipe shorts earn more saves and shares per 1,000 views than the account’s own baseline.

How we’d measure: Platform analytics by format; saves are our proxy for “I’ll make this for lunch”.

KPI 03

Retail velocity

We expect: Units per store per week grow faster in shelf-takeover stores than in matched stores without it.

How we’d measure: Retailer point-of-sale data, test vs. control stores over the flight.

KPI 04

Ritual adoption

We expect: 12:30 alarm opt-ins repeat-purchase more often within 30 days than non-opted buyers.

How we’d measure: SMS opt-in cohort vs. matched non-opted cohort, plus #TinOClock duet volume.

These are the success measures we would agree with the client before launch. As a concept project, no results are claimed.

Sources for brand facts

In good company