By Ricky Collucci
As a marketing content coordinator, I have different responsibilities than many employees here at Absolutely Fish. Instead of sticking my hands in tanks, applying fish husbandry knowledge, and caring for our range of aquatic animals, my duties pertain more to event planning, content creation, and a variety of office tasks that change day to day. However, as a communications professional, I know how important it is to apply our company mission to every aspect of our operations. With our goals being environmental education and conservation, it’s pertinent that every level of our communication and business operation reflects that sentiment. An aspect of my job that I take seriously is applying our company mission, even when no one is looking. That means putting environmentalism first and creating opportunities for the public to gain a genuine understanding of aquatic animals.
Internalizing the mission can mean doing simple things such as recycling and avoiding AI usage, but it could also mean something more complex such as integrating environmentalism into our sales and events. For instance, for our recent Earth Day celebration, I was tasked with purchasing some promotional items and decorations for our store. Instead of buying non-recyclable favors for our customers that would likely be thrown out quickly, I did some research and found paper wristbands with wildflower seeds inside of them that could be planted after use. Something that simple is the difference between a heap of junk ending up in a landfill and beneficial plants growing in our local environment. This also provided an opportunity to educate customers about wildflowers and water conservation. To spice up our store, we reused decorations from previous years and hung paper streamers that were recycled afterwards. While there were a range of interesting Earth Day promos and decorations on the market, we felt it was important to celebrate the planet in a way that benefits it rather than contributes to environmental harm.
Above: A reusable PET jar that we encourage our customers to use when taking home fish.
Another one of my everyday tasks is creating videos and promotional content for our Facebook and Instagram. While it’s fun to embrace trends and make stupid fish memes, I also make educational videos for our socials. This requires that I observe media trends and understand what type of media is successful so that our messages get more reach. Most recently, I created a video about terrapin conservation and how individuals can help a terrapin in need. Another successful video I made about tank cycling gained over 52,000 views. An intimate understanding of how our public consumes media and how to create it is necessary, and that’s where my media knowledge comes in handy. I can help educate beyond our in-person customer base by conveying information in a trendy format that resonates with our main demographics. After all, the medium is the message.
While what I do might seem trivial to most people, it’s important for our business mission. That’s because environmentalism is more than just a “vibe” businesses can create through a carefully developed brand identity- it’s an action. Where many companies aim to persuade consumers with their mission, we make ours a function of our business. It feels pretty good to be using my knowledge for good, so although I may have a different skillset than many of my colleagues, we all have the same goal at the end of the day to educate the public and contribute to a better future for fish.