Women in Fisheries: Marianne LaCroix

Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative executive director Marianne LaCroix is a woman who knows a lot about Maine’s lobster industry. Which is somewhat surprising for a person whose childhood was spent among the lakes and streams of central Massachusetts. “Well, we did go to the beach in Maine and New Hampshire in the summer,” she laughed.

LaCroix and her family enjoy hiking and camping throughout Maine. Photos courtesy of M. LaCroix.

LaCroix found her way into Maine’s lobster world via a career in advertising. After graduating from Boston College in 1991 during an economic recession, she landed a job at a Boston advertising agency. “I was involved in media buying, working for high-tech clients in engineering,” she said. She and her husband-to-be, who is from Maine, decided to move back to his home state where LaCroix took a position with Holt, Hughes and Stamell, a Portland advertising firm. Her client was L.L. Bean.

“It was great,” LaCroix recalled. Her responsibilities included marketing the company’s new Outdoor Discovery program and retail store. She was young and the people she worked with at the agency were young too. “We had a lot of fun. It was a great account.”

Soon she was managing U.S. advertising and marketing for another large client, the Norwegian Seafood Council. “One interesting thing I learned is that marketing boards are different from companies. With a company, the advertising can be directly linked to sales,” she said. “A marketing board is pushing a brand, and that is harder to measure.” A staff person from the Seafood Council once said to her that marketing is successful if, when you go to sell the product, the customers already know about it.

In 1999 the Portland agency folded. LaCroix freelanced for several previous clients, including SeaFax, the credit reporting company for seafood businesses. She and her husband started their family. In 2006 she began working with the original Maine Lobster Promotion Council on a freelance basis. That work soon turned into a part-time and finally full-time position.

The Maine Lobster Promotion Council was formed by the Legislature in 1991. It had a small budget and a small staff who did most of the advertising and marketing work in-house. “It was mostly a local and regional effort. We were not as strategic then,” LaCroix said.

In 2013 the Legislature terminated the promotion council and created the new Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. The Collaborative’s budget was much larger, supported by a surcharge on lobstermen, dealers and processors’ licenses, and LaCroix became the organization’s marketing director. When the Collaborative’s first director, Matt Jacobson left in 2019, LaCroix became acting director, then was appointed as executive director.

“I had done my job under three different directors and learned a lot from each. I felt very well prepared to represent the Collaborative. Then the Maine Fishermen’s Forum came up and I had to speak about all that we were doing,” she recalled. “That was when I realized I had to work on my public speaking skills!”

LaCroix found her marketing talents tested when the Covid pandemic hit in 2020. “Everything shut down. It was just an unprecedented situation. But we connected with the industry, switched to consumer-based products, and really pivoted,” she said. Seafood companies quickly began selling Maine lobster to home-bound consumers through grocery store chains and online, marketing lobster as a delicacy anyone could serve themselves, rather than at a restaurant.

“The most challenging time from a marketing perspective came in 2022 when the Marine Stewardship Council revoked the Maine lobster fishery’s sustainability accreditation and the Monterey Bay Aquarium put Maine lobster on its red list,” she said. As a result, Whole Foods stopped offering Maine lobster in its stores. Negative stories about lobstermen and North Atlantic right whales began appearing in the national media.

The Collaborative took steps to counter the bad publicity. “We had lots of marketing materials for buyers to share with their customers,” LaCroix said. “We had a web site, videos, fact sheets and lots of positive material to distribute.” Surveys of seafood consumers at the time found that the majority were not changing their buying preferences because of the right whale issue.

LaCroix continues to be a dedicated promoter of Maine lobster and the lobster fishery. “The people I work with are passionate about what they do. They want to keep fishing well past normal retirement. And the owner-operator model makes this a different sort of fishery. There are no hired captains,” she said.

Lobster landings have ebbed since a peak in 2016, which to LaCroix means it’s even more important to get top dollar for each lobster harvested. The Collaborative’s years of promoting Maine lobster mean that many new markets are now seeking the product. The Collaborative’s 2025 marketing plan includes promotion of Maine lobster as a unique premium product that can be used in many different ways.

LaCroix has seen the state’s lobster industry weather various crises and she remains positive about its future. “The lobster fishery is a little bit of a roller coaster,” LaCroix acknowledged. “But the fishery is very resilient. Lobstermen and dealers find ways to deal with these changes.”