Aquaculture Had a Problem: Nobody Knew It Existed

Imagine you produce half the fish consumed in the world, but people don’t even know what to call what you do. Worse still: the only word they associate you with — “piscifactoría” (fish farm) — conjures up images of murky pools, suspicious feed, and a second-rate product. 89.5% of Spaniards thought of the industry through that word, and 33.8% had never even heard the term “aquaculture” in their lives. Meanwhile, on Google and in the media, we were the villain in someone else’s story.

And here’s where it gets interesting. Because we didn’t have a quality problem, or a capacity problem, or a purpose problem. We had an image problem. Same activity, two words, two opposing perceptions: “piscifactoría” carried all the prejudice; “aquaculture,” when people discovered it, evoked naturalness, health, sustainability, and animal welfare. The opportunity was right there — waiting for someone to name it properly.

Así nació el PLECA, un plan estratégico con la ambición de conseguir que la acuicultura española fuera conocida y valorada por toda la sociedad. No era una campaña de un mes ni un spot bonito. Era un viaje largo, con la paciencia del que sabe que cambiar un relato social lleva años de trabajo constante.

We started where you have to start: building the conversation. Over 2,000 social media pieces, photo essays, video documentaries, infographics, 40 influencers who brought aquaculture to audiences that would never have searched for the term, more than 115 pieces of content from the press office, 2 press trips to real facilities, 11 roundtable discussions, 2 regional conferences, blind tastings to prove the product spoke for itself, and 220 articles published in national media. All of this backed by an expert committee, a team of industry spokespeople, animal welfare guidelines, and a social listening tool to know in real time what was being said — and how to respond.

And then came the moment to make the leap to mass media. Because being found by those who are searching is one thing — being discovered by those who aren’t is something else entirely. We created the campaign “Aquaculture Is Fish for Everyone” with TV spots broadcast across 40 channels, including the major audiovisual groups, supported by a strategy spanning radio, outdoor, digital, and print. Because if 50% of the fish we eat already comes from aquaculture, without it there wouldn’t be fish for everyone.

Results have accelerated dramatically over the past year, thanks to the cumulative effect of six years of sustained effort:

• Spontaneous awareness ×6: from 1.9% in 2019 to 11.4% in 2025, nearly tripling in the last year alone (from 4.2% to 11.4%).
• Total awareness: 55.4%.
• Aquaculture awareness: 77.4% of Spaniards now know what it is, reducing the number of people unfamiliar with it by 32%.
• Positive sentiment: 3 out of 4 Spaniards who know about it have a favorable perception (74.4%).
• Perceived necessity: 97.7% consider aquaculture necessary (≥5 out of 10), and 85.6% rate it as quite or very necessary.
• Rating of Spanish aquaculture: 94.3% consider it better than or equal to that of other developed countries.
• Ad recall: 10.3 million Spaniards.

Where Google once displayed hostile headlines, positive content now appears. Where there was once ignorance, there is now a real conversation with society.