How much can the “brand name” of a fish matter?

Like, if you rename a fish, can it sell more? 

In the early 1970s, fishermen knew of a mild-but-yummy deep-sea fish that grew to about 15 lb. But demand was anemic, so it wasn’t fished much. Why? Well, in part because it was called the, uh, slimehead. Ew, David.

But the enterprising folks at the US National Marine Fisheries Service saw silver in that thar slime. So they renamed it the orange roughy to make it more marketable.

And boy did it work. Too well, in fact. By the late ‘90s, the fish was overharvested and several of the populations collapsed. See, they didn’t quite account for the fact that the orange roughy is slow-growing & doesn’t start reproducing until it’s 20 yrs old. (They can live until they’re 200.)

Today the orange roughy is managed more sustainably. Profits are healthy since the fish commands a price premium. Nice work for a brand name change.

The story is the same around the world for many other fish:


Patagonian toothfish → Chilean sea bass

Rat tail → Roundnose grenadier

Pilchard → Cornish sardine

Dolphinfish → Mahi mahi

Wolffish → Scotch halibut

Whore’s egg → Sea urchin

(You gotta see what some of these things look like too. Ewwwww, David.)

In all, these rebrandings have reeled in $billions in revenue and healthy profits. Like the slimehead, they’ve also often led to overfishing and population collapse. *Sigh*.


Some lessons:

🔸Shakespeare wasn’t entirely right: a slimehead by any other name WOULD taste sweeter. Names absolutely can make a difference.

🔸A name also helps ‘position’ a thing in peoples minds, sometimes into a new category. I might not know what to do with a “plichard”, but call it a sardine and I know how to eat it.

🔸Be careful tho: if your brand or product name already has equity — like, people actually know it & use it — tread lightly. But if 90% of people don’t care, or if it’s only a tiny group of current buyers that do, the upsides of a rename far, far outweigh the downsides.

(PS there really IS a photo of a black hole. And it’s incredible.)