Roger That

Yeah, Jolly Roger Berkowitz is at it again. Roger is the son of George Berkowitz, who founded Legal Sea Foods back in 1950. Roger started working at the old man’s place when he was just 10 years old. Georgie must have been a real tough bastard.

Later, when Roger took over as the Chief Fishmonger, he was credited with expanding the enterprise to 35 restaurants, employing 4,000 people and generating more than $200 million in annual sales. Besides great product, Roger had great advertising. I’ll get into that in a minute.

Recently Roger sold the business to a hospitality group from Ireland. But that ain’t the end of the story. Old Rog is on the comeback trail. He’s got a new business and he’s calling it Roger’s Fish Company. He’s going to be an online purveyor of flash-frozen fish, live and cooked lobsters, and ready-to-heat meals. He’ll also be selling double New England clam chowder, crab cakes, and Boston Cream Pie. Sounds goddamn good to me, Bucko. 

When people think of Legal Sea Foods, the thing they remember is Roger’s bold, creative approach to advertising. Legal’s ads were developed by NYC ad agency Devito/Verdi. The Berkowitz method was for ads to raise eyebrows: “That’s the point. The purpose of advertising is to get a message across and you don’t get it by blending.” The ads were always tongue-in-cheek and some people were offended by them. But that’s life on the prairie. 

Today, when almost all advertising is pedestrian and homogenized and beaten to death by focus groups, I hope Roger continues to do bold, funny messaging. There’s no arguing how far it took Legal Sea Foods, Bluegill Maloney.

Keep your dukes up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_IfSxMQ7yg

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