OLD HOI'S 老海记

AI-generated brand key-visual (gpt-image-2, reference-first · 9.6/10). Wordmark text is AI-rendered — to be reset by a designer.

Sea-life story

The hero line is a first-person reform story — the "farmed-not-netted" argument embodied in one man's redemption arc: "For forty years I cast my nets in these waters. Then I watched the sea go quiet — the turtles, the small fish, everything the nets took by accident. So I put my nets down for good and built a farm in clean water. No nets. No bycatch. No emptying the ocean — just Old Hoi's clean prawns and grouper. I stopped taking from the sea so it could fill back up." It is honest and defensible precisely because it doesn't claim aquaculture is zero-impact — it claims a fisherman CHOSE to stop netting, which is literally true of a farm-raised, own-breeding-centre brand. The reform arc converts "farmed, not wild" from a defensive footnote into an emotional virtue.

Positioning

The seafood house with a face and a conscience — the fisherman who quit his nets to farm clean water. Premium-but-warm, heritage-feeling and gift-worthy, sitting deliberately AGAINST the two competitor poles: not the clinical/editorial "spec-receipt" restraint (Wildtype/Sea to Table register) and not the loud pantry-playful maximalism (Fishwife). Old Hoi's owns the emotional middle: HK-retro nostalgia + a redemption story that makes farmed-not-wild the whole point. You're not buying commodity prawns; you're buying prawns from Old Hoi's clean farm — a man you'd trust.

Logo concept

A vintage rope-bordered CREST/SEAL, in the lineage of the Chicken-of-the-Sea mermaid seal and old American seafood can-labels crossed with an HK tin-sign. CENTER: Old Hoi in warm 3/4 profile — weathered, sun-creased face, a broad gap-toothed grin, a rumpled captain's/fisherman's cap, rolled sleeves, a single small anchor tattoo, and behind his shoulder a COILED NET HUNG ON A HOOK (never in his hands — the "nets down" symbol is load-bearing). ARC TOP: "OLD HOI'S" set in a vintage slab (Clarendon/Sentinel register). ARC BOTTOM: 老海记 in authentic 北魏楷書 HK signboard calligraphy. Flanking chips: "EST." + "FARM-RAISED · NO NETS." Base identity is two-color (tin-sign brick red + deep ink navy on aged cream) with an optional marigold-gold detail for gift tiers. NON-NEGOTIABLE: carve out a standalone mascot-FACE avatar mark (just Old Hoi's grinning head) for the WhatsApp/Meta profile and sticker use, and it must survive the WWF-panda test — reduce to a single-colour, thumbnail-legible silhouette. Ship a turnaround + expression sheet so Hoi poses consistently everywhere.

Illustration

Vintage engraving meets warm screenprint/riso. Hand-drawn ink linework with a slight wobble (human, not vector-perfect), overprinted with 2–3 warm spot colours, halftone/riso grain, and aged-paper texture — the exact craft of old seafood can-labels and HK soy-sauce/fishball tin-signs. The prawn (vannamei) and dragon-tiger grouper get reverent, specimen-style engraved illustrations (retro can-label fish, not cartoonish). Old Hoi himself is a consistent flat-but-warm character with real dignity and craftsman confidence — closer to Charlie-the-Tuna's self-assured personality and Fishwife's illustration-forward charm than to a kiddie mascot. A small "friends" cast — the sea creatures his farm SPARES (a turtle, a dolphin, a juvenile fish) — extends range for conservation storytelling and merch. Comic-strip panels carry the origin story; real hero PHOTOGRAPHY is reserved for the money shot and sits INSIDE an illustrated Old-Hoi "world" frame.

Typography

A retro-signage system, warm not clinical. DISPLAY / EN wordmark: a vintage slab-serif — Clarendon (or Hoefler Sentinel / Belizio) for authentic can-label weight; plus a hand-painted sign-painter BRUSH script for Old Hoi's "signature" accents (commission custom, or a genuine sign-writer face — avoid the Lobster web-cliché). CN WORDMARK: real 北魏楷書 (Beiwei Kaishi) HK signboard calligraphy — e.g. Julius Hui's 北魏真書 revival — this single choice is what makes the HK-retro read authentic rather than pastiche; a bold 隸書 is the fallback. BODY EN: a warm humanist grotesque (Neue Haas Grotesk / Söhne / Whyte) for readability and spec labels, set in small-caps with wide tracking for the "certified/craft" feel. BODY CN: a friendly rounded 圆体 or 思源柔黑 (Source Han Sans / soft-gothic) so the Chinese functional layer feels approachable and festive, never sterile.

Art direction

Warm documentary-nostalgia, the opposite of cold aquarium-blue seafood photography. Golden-hour / soft tungsten light, matte finish (never glossy), a whisper of film grain. Props from Old Hoi's world: enamelware dishes, kraft paper, twine, weathered wood, crushed ice, wet stone — clean but lived-in. Coiled nets appear only HUNG UP on hooks, never mid-cast. THE MONEY SHOT (reserve real photography for this): a sashimi-grade vannamei cross-section glistening on crushed ice in a retro enamel dish, or an ikejime grouper laid with quiet precision — appetite-forward, editorial, warm. The graphic layer wraps these real photos in the can-label crest, halftone textures and hand-lettered captions, so appetite-appeal (photo) and character-charm (illustration) coexist in one frame. Festive skin: same crest and world re-skinned in brick-red + marigold-gold with 双喜/福 motifs and Old Hoi in a festive jacket — no new system needed, the base palette already carries CNY.

Ad style

Mascot-hosted storytelling — Old Hoi narrates in warm, first-person HK-uncle voice: nostalgic, trustworthy, a little funny, deeply human, never a discount-scream. Format families: (1) ORIGIN-STORY reel/carousel — the comic strip of young Hoi hauling nets → the sea going quiet → Old Hoi hanging up his nets and building the clean farm; (2) HONEST TWO-PANEL contrast — warm-illustrated nets-and-bycatch (turtle, small fish caught by accident, no gore, no guilt-dump) vs one clean farm; (3) HERO-PHOTO desire shot — the sashimi cross-section with a small Old Hoi badge + one line; (4) FESTIVE gift films — Old Hoi as the 祝福-giving uncle handing over a gift tin. Native-channel levers on Meta+WhatsApp: Old Hoi WhatsApp sticker packs (expressions), collectible-tin gift teasers, UGC "meet Old Hoi" prompts. Every ad closes on a soft, warm CTA ("Come get your prawns from Old Hoi 👴🦐"), spec-backed but never salesy. The same face on the ad, the box, the profile avatar and the sticker is the compounding asset.

Packaging

Retro can-label / tin-sign crest printed on a warm kraft box: Old Hoi's rope-bordered badge front-and-centre, a red "NO NETS" chop stamp, and the spec line ("farm-raised · antibiotic-free · sashimi-grade at harvest") set as a designed vintage label, not fine print. Inside the lid, Old Hoi's origin story runs as a printed comic strip + a simple single-origin map (Nucleus Breeding Centre → Desaru farm → your table) — the trust receipt told the warm way. GIFT tier upgrades to a collectible enamel-style tin (or wax-sealed kraft) with an embossed Old Hoi crest, made to be kept. FESTIVE: the same crest re-skinned brick-red + marigold-gold with 双喜/福 motifs and Old Hoi in festive garb — collectible-per-year so gifters come back. A sticker sheet of Old Hoi expressions tucks in every box to seed the WhatsApp sticker loop.

Primary ICP

PRIMARY: Chinese-majority SG households, 35–60, the festive/CNY gift-and-reunion buyers — value heritage, family, nostalgia and a trustworthy "face"; they de-risk an unknown premium seafood brand by trusting a person and a story, not a spec sheet, and they over-index on gifting a character-branded box. SECONDARY: younger SG/MY families (28–40) riding the huge 茶餐廳 / HK-retro nostalgia wave — they love warm, shareable IP (LINE Friends, Sanrio, retro tin-sign kitsch) and will spread Old Hoi WhatsApp stickers and origin-story reels. The mascot/character idiom fits both because a warm human character is the cheapest, most compounding way to make live sashimi-grade seafood feel giftable, trustworthy and emotionally ownable in a market that already loves cute-but-heartfelt IP and buys on relationship + festivity.

Pricing posture

A human face + a reform story is the strongest willingness-to-pay lever available to a brand-new, unknown premium seafood name, because it converts risk into trust. Effect is strongest on the GIFT and FESTIVE tiers — a character-branded, collectible box feels more giftable and more valuable, which firmly supports the S$159 双喜临门 gift (2kg prawn + 2 grouper) and the S$310 festive tier, and lets a limited collectible Old-Hoi enamel-style TIN push into the thin ultra-premium 30–40% band where the mascot packaging itself IS the value. On the CORE tier, the story earns an at-market premium without a discount-scream: live vannamei ~S$38/kg (vs Seaco S$39.90) reads as "Old Hoi's clean farm," not commodity; reprice standalone grouper down from the over-anchored S$54 to ~S$48; hero combo holds at S$83. Keep core within the 10–20% premium ceiling — discipline protects the honesty. MALAYSIA is priced NATIVELY, never FX-translated: prawn ~RM62/kg, free-ship at RM150, festive tiers set to local gifting norms. Bonus: the character enables WhatsApp stickers + merch that deepen repeat and LTV, so the brand grows margin through loyalty, not just unit price.

Sample Meta hooks

• For 40 years I cast my nets. Then the sea went quiet. So I put them down — for good. — Old Hoi 老海记
• No nets. No bycatch. Just Old Hoi's clean-water prawns — sweet enough for sashimi, straight off one honest farm.
• This Chinese New Year, gift the prawn with a conscience 🦐 老海记 — from the fisherman who chose to save his sea. (har-har — prosperity!)