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Grouper Week spoof on Shark Week to promote Pinellas restaurants

 
Logos from Visit St. Pete-Clearwater for Grouper Week, a promotion that spoofs Shark Week by promoting grouper and tourism to this area.
Logos from Visit St. Pete-Clearwater for Grouper Week, a promotion that spoofs Shark Week by promoting grouper and tourism to this area.
Published July 2, 2015

ST. PETERSBURG — Since debuting in 1988, the Discovery Channel's Shark Week has become a cultural phenomenon, with celebrity hosts, startling shark footage and impressive ratings.

Continuing a string of clever tactics, Pinellas County's tourism agency, Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, is starting a weeklong campaign that spoofs the series and highlights the Tampa Bay's most famous fish.

They're calling it Grouper Week.

Indeed, it's safe to go back in the tartar. You're going to need a bigger bun. Insert shark joke here.

As part of the campaign, cheesy television advertisements in the Tampa Bay area and on YouTube show people on Clearwater Beach — including wrestler Luke Williams of the WWE tag team the Bushwackers — attacking grouper sandwiches as if they were sharks. (Watch online at tbtim.es/kpc.) Billboards across St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Orlando will showcase advertisements that make grouper look like a menacing predator of the sea.

The videos were filmed at Frenchy's Rockaway Grill on Clearwater Beach.

"Grouper is one of those things that has so much hype here on the Gulf Coast," said Frenchy's manager Tara Mollick. "It's something you can only get here. So when people come to visit, they want to eat fish fresh off the boat while looking at the water."

The promotion is meant to be a playful way to promote dining at seafood restaurants in the area.

"Almost every restaurant in St. Petersburg or Clearwater has grouper on the menu," said David Downing, the agency's executive director. "We're just promoting what our restaurants are already well known for offering."

Last year, more than 7.2 million pounds of grouper caught in the Gulf of Mexico was consumed in Florida, according to data from the Florida Department of Agriculture. Pinellas County led the charge with 4.3 million pounds caught, sold and eaten here.

The campaign, which kicks off Monday, runs the same week as Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

"We've participated in restaurant weeks before, but we wanted to do something more unique and fun this summer," Downing said. "We'll ride on the coattails of Shark Week, something that's already universally known and happening the same week."

The marketing campaign was designed with "going viral" in mind. The 30-second video was made to be shared on social media. A website, grouperweek.com, has been set up to promote grouper recipes fans can try at home and lists specials at local restaurants.

Justin Timineri, an executive chef and Florida's culinary ambassador with the Florida Department of Agriculture, will be in town Monday sharing his favorite grouper recipes.

"Grouper is really the go-to fish in Florida because you can do so much with it. It's more than just grouper sandwiches," Timineri said.

From grouper Benedicts to grouper Philly cheesesteaks to grouper reuben sandwiches, the fish is served a variety of ways across Florida.

At Crabby Bill's in Indian Rocks Beach, the classic grouper sandwich is one of the restaurant's best sellers, CEO Matt Loder said. Last year, the restaurant sold 33,000 sandwiches at that location alone. So far this year, Crabby Bill's has sold about 17,500, Loder said.

"That's 36 percent of our entire menu, and the crazy part is we have a really large menu," Loder said. "Customers measure our entire restaurant by the quality of our grouper sandwich."

Though it is yet to be seen whether this campaign will be successful, it continues a string of striking marketing campaigns by Visit St. Pete-Clearwater.

Last winter, the agency launched a campaign in which snowmen popped up in New York City and Chicago holding signs that said "Sunshine or Bust!" and "Even I've had enough!" The signs encouraged Northerners to visit winterblows.com or the hashtag #winterblows. The campaign got a lot of attention.

Before that, the agency launched the "manaphin" campaign, an April Fools' prank that introduced a mythical half-manatee, half-dolphin creature to the public. The campaign received one of the hospitality industry's highest marketing awards last year.

Contact Justine Griffin at jgriffin@tampabay.com. Follow @SunBizGriffin.