Tasty alternatives to seafood
Monkeys by the Sea team dreams of a healthy ocean for future generations. And yet, like many people around the world, they grew up eating fish and loving seafood. Mother Ocean is facing serious challenges caused by the growing world population. Overfishing, industrial pollution, rising water temperatures due to carbon emissions, and the well-known problem of plastic soup. All severely threatening our precious marine ecosystems. We should all do more to preserve our Oceans.
Good news, people are becoming more aware of the need to preserve sea life and the world seems to be ready to change its diet. Enter Thijs and his team: they are on a mission to create delicious seafood alternatives made from sustainable ingredients from land and sea. 100% Plant-based and free from soy and palm oil. Or, as they like to say:
No monkey business, Just Delicious!
Once you know some things, you can’t unknow them. It’s a burden that can never be given away.
Notebooks as a conversational gift
MOYUs were primarily intended as a present for the team. Every new team member gets a personalised message from the founder written in the book. But soon they also became a thank-you gift for most loyal customers and those special few who helped the company get where they are now.
You know how it goes when you start your own business. You pitch it a thousand times to anyone willing to listen. You develop the product and you have even more people test it. You pitch to recruit talent and to attract initial investment and you pitch it all the time to your customers.
Along this journey, you meet many inspiring people who all play their own unique role in helping you get your product to market and you want to thank them with something memorable, something they will enjoy using for many years to come. And ideally, something that not only reminds them of you but sparks a conversation with other people in their network.
This is where a personalized stone paper notebook comes in handy as a practical conversation starter. Let’s say someone sees it on the table, likes it and picks it up. One could invite a conversation with “If paper can be made from stones, you probably won’t be surprised that seafood can be made from plants!”
Always be curious, don’t choose the obvious.
When it comes to designing the notebooks, the team took a pretty laid-back approach and let our designer do her thing. With only one request: to place an inspirational quote on the first page. Said and done.
When we asked them why they loved the notebooks, this is what we heard back:
“I was immediately amazed by the quality of the material and the sustainability story behind it. It’s probably not a well-known fact that the paper industry has a huge environmental impact and uses a lot of trees and scarce fresh water. It resonated with me, because in similar ways, the seafood industry also has these ‘hidden’ costs for the environment and a huge impact on our planet that many people don’t know about yet. In addition, I learned that the waste stream from the paper industry ends up in rivers and eventually into our oceans. Our company cares deeply about the ocean and the Life below water (SDG14), so using these notebooks was a no-brainer for our team.”
