Terribly Delicious Turns Colombia's Invasive Lionfish Into a Menu Item
Terribly Delicious is a 2014 ambient public interest campaign created by Geometry Global for Colombia's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, designed to reduce the invasive lionfish population in Colombia's Caribbean reefs by repositioning the species as a desirable food source for Colombian consumers, chefs, and fishing communities, according to LinkedIn.
Colombia's Caribbean coastline faces a documented ecological emergency. The lionfish, known locally as pez león, is an invasive predator with no natural enemies in Atlantic waters that has spread across more than 40 Caribbean countries, according to Elizabeth Taylor Jay, Adviser on Marine and Coastal Affairs at Colombia's Ministry of Environment. Rather than frame the problem through prohibitions or abstract conservation statistics, the Ministry chose a behaviour-change strategy built around appetite. The campaign's central proposition was simple and counterintuitive: eating lionfish is an act of environmental rescue.
Terribly Delicious launched in Colombia in May 2014, operating across ambient touchpoints that embedded the lionfish into food culture rather than warning culture, according to Elojodeiberoamerica. The campaign connected Colombian fishermen, renowned chefs, gastronomy experts, and restaurant diners into a new food cycle — a supply-and-demand loop designed to make commercial lionfish consumption viable and culturally normal, according to Adsoftheworld. In a notable strategic extension documented across coverage of the campaign, Catholic priests were also engaged to encourage lionfish consumption among their congregations, bringing institutional credibility to the behavioural ask. The campaign is catalogued on Clapboard with one media asset and carries a Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100.
Geometry Global identified a single, powerful consumer insight at the heart of the Terribly Delicious campaign. Colombians are not indifferent to what they eat — they are deeply food-proud. The challenge was not awareness of the lionfish problem but rather the absence of any cultural or commercial reason to catch, cook, or order the species. Geometry Global, led creatively by Vice President of Creative Juan José Posada and with Xavier Serrano, CEO of Geometry Global, proposing the core food-cycle concept, reoriented the entire campaign around gastronomic desire rather than environmental guilt.
The strategic rationale was grounded in the species' actual qualities. Lionfish is edible, nutritious, and — crucially — its spines are only venomous when alive, meaning it is safe to handle once caught. This biological fact gave Geometry Global and co-credited agency Ogilvy & Mather Colombia a legitimate and memorable platform: the fish is terribly threatening in the water and terribly delicious on a plate. The campaign did not ask Colombians to sacrifice anything. It asked them to indulge, and framed indulgence as conservation.
In the Colombian market, government-led behaviour-change campaigns face the inherent credibility challenge of institutional distance from everyday life. By routing the campaign through chefs, fishermen, and priests rather than government spokespeople alone, Terribly Delicious bypassed that institutional distance entirely. Competitors in the ambient public interest space — including campaigns from Brazil's environmental agencies and regional WWF activations — have more typically relied on shock imagery or penalty-focused messaging. Terribly Delicious chose the opposite register: pleasure, community, and culinary aspiration. According to coverage on Ads of the World, the campaign engaged real gastronomic networks across Colombia to give the concept operational weight beyond its communications layer.
Terribly Delicious operated in the ambient medium, meaning its creative effectiveness depended on physical presence inside the spaces where food decisions are made and cultural values are formed. The campaign placed lionfish within Colombian restaurant environments, culinary events, and community gatherings — not as a curiosity but as a legitimate menu proposition.
Xavier Serrano, CEO of Geometry Global, is credited with leading the creative concept, constructing a new food cycle that gave the campaign its operational architecture. Juan José Posada served as Vice President of Creative on the project, as documented on Clapboard. The campaign's execution required genuine coordination across sectors: fishermen needed to be equipped and incentivised to catch lionfish at scale, chefs needed to develop recipes and plate the fish credibly, and diners needed an ambient environment in which trying the species felt like discovery rather than obligation. The engagement of Catholic priests as community messengers added a layer of ambient reach into congregation settings that no poster or broadcast placement could replicate.
The campaign's visual and conceptual identity leaned into the duality embedded in its title. Terribly Delicious acknowledged the lionfish's menace — its venomous spines, its voracious appetite for reef fish, its rapid spread documented across the Caribbean according to Elizabeth Taylor Jay of Colombia's Ministry of Environment — while simultaneously presenting it as a refined culinary subject. That tonal balance, holding danger and appetite in the same frame, gave the creative work a distinctiveness that purely functional environmental campaigns rarely achieve. Co-agency Ogilvy & Mather Colombia contributed to the campaign's development alongside Geometry Global Bogotá, as reported by El Ojo de Iberoamérica and confirmed across multiple industry sources including Ads of the World.
Terribly Delicious earned industry recognition at the highest level of international advertising awards. At Cannes Lions 2014, the campaign received a Silver Lion in Promo & Activation, as reported by Ads of the World and confirmed by El Ojo de Iberoamérica. A Bronze Lion was also awarded at the same festival, according to coverage documented across industry sources including Latinspots and Adlatina. These results place Terribly Delicious among the most decorated Colombian public interest campaigns of its era at Cannes.
No independently verified consumer behaviour metrics — such as documented increases in lionfish catch volumes, restaurant menu adoption rates, or measurable reef impact data tied specifically to the campaign — are publicly available for the period following the May 2014 launch. What the campaign did produce, verifiably, is a documented institutional relationship. According to Clapboard's archive, the Geometry Global and Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development Colombia partnership that began with Terribly Delicious in 2014 extended into a broader behaviour-change platform by 2016, addressing wildlife trafficking and demand for animal-derived products. This lineage suggests the campaign was operationally credible enough to justify continued investment from the Ministry.
Structurally, Terribly Delicious demonstrates what makes ambient public interest campaigns effective in markets like Colombia: specificity of ask, credibility of messenger, and a consumer benefit that aligns with the desired behaviour rather than conflicting with it. The Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100 reflects a campaign with strong strategic architecture and verified awards recognition, moderated by the absence of publicly documented consumer outcome data.
Terribly Delicious was a 2014 ambient public interest campaign created by Geometry Global for Colombia's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development. It repositioned the invasive lionfish as a desirable food source, building a new consumption cycle involving Colombian fishermen, chefs, and diners to address the species' ecological threat to Caribbean reefs.
Geometry Global created Terribly Delicious in Colombia, with Ogilvy & Mather Colombia co-credited on the campaign. Xavier Serrano, CEO of Geometry Global, led the core creative concept, and Juan José Posada served as Vice President of Creative, as documented on Clapboard and reported by El Ojo de Iberoamérica.
Terribly Delicious won a Silver Lion in Promo & Activation at Cannes Lions 2014, according to Ads of the World and El Ojo de Iberoamérica. The campaign also received a Bronze Lion at the same festival, making it one of the most recognised Colombian public interest campaigns at Cannes that year.
Lionfish is an invasive predator that had spread across more than 40 Caribbean countries, according to Elizabeth Taylor Jay of Colombia's Ministry of Environment, who described it as a national security threat. The species has no natural enemies in Atlantic waters and devastates reef ecosystems, making urgent behavioural intervention a conservation priority in Colombia.
PezLeón is the Spanish term for lionfish, the invasive species at the centre of the Terribly Delicious campaign. The designation connects the campaign's Colombian identity to the species targeted for consumption. Geometry Global built the campaign's entire strategic and creative framework around transforming pez león from ecological threat into culinary opportunity across Colombia.
Terribly Delicious holds a Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong strategic architecture and its verified Silver and Bronze Lions at Cannes 2014, balanced against the absence of publicly documented consumer behaviour outcome data following the campaign's May 2014 launch in Colombia.
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