Printed copy. Mark it up however suits and send it back, or fill it in online.
EX 1191 · Mallacoota Abalone

Hi All,

Filming has kicked off in Mallacoota this week. Over the next few days we’ll be out at Gabo, out over the coast at dawn, under the water, and inside the factory while the grading is going on.

The one thing that can’t be created in all of this is the words for each of the chapters, written by the people who have lived it. Not the official version, and not what you think I want to hear. Tell it to me like we’re at Scallys on a Friday arvo.

So that is all this is. Your own experience, in your own words.

Different answers to the same question are the point. If four families answer this and say four different things, that is a better result than one tidy version. Overlap is fine. Contradiction is interesting.

It also works well as a conversation. If someone in your family was here at the start, sitting down together and filling it in between you will get more out of it than doing it on your own.

None of the business side is being asked of you. Charles has the company names, dates and certifications on his own version.

Take as long as you like. Your answers save on this device as you go, so you can close the page and come back whenever suits. There is also a print button at the top right if you would rather sit down with it on paper, and you are welcome to hand that back to me instead.

Any dramas, ring me on 0478 101 521.

Website content discoveryWhat the site should actually say

Will is filming in Mallacoota this week. The footage is locked to five chapters: Place, Ocean, Harvest, Craft, Table. This gathers the words that sit against it.

We are treating the positioning as settled, so there are no questions here re-opening "purity through isolation", the market strategy, or the call to keep the focus off individual divers. What we need is the material underneath: names, years, numbers, place names, and a clear line on what we are allowed to claim.

Everything is marked Essential, Important or Optional. The Essentials are the ones I cannot write around. Answer those and skip whatever else you need to.

Your part in it

Short warm-up. Rough answers are fine, and often better.

One or two sentences. Answers to this question tend to end up on the homepage more or less as written.

Names, dates and the record

Four different versions of the company name are in circulation across the proposal, the film brief, the label brief and the email signature. A website repeats a name several hundred times, so it is worth settling. None of this is going to the board, it is quicker if you just write it.

EssentialWhat is the correct public-facing brand name for the website?
The label brief makes Mallacoota Abalone the brand hero and treats EX 1191 as export credentials. The film brief and board approval use Mallacoota Wild Abalone Co-Operative. The board leave-behind says Mallacoota Black Lip Abalone Co-Operative. The domain is ex1191.com.au.
The board leave-behind claims 56 years of heritage. That number came from us, not from you, and it has never been checked. A precise year lets us write "since 19XX" instead of a figure that goes stale every January.
Currently on file: AFCOL Australia Limited t/as Mallacoota Abalone, 1 Commercial Road, Mallacoota VIC 3892.
ImportantConfirm the export number is written EX 1191 with a space, as on the label.
The website, QR pages and film end cards should match the packaging character for character.
We need to be right about this in export-facing copy.
The site currently sits on ex1191.com.au. Keeping it, adding a second domain, or moving are all workable, but it changes what we build.

The co-operative

Sixteen families in a small coastal town over half a century. Almost none of it is written down anywhere, which is the main reason this questionnaire exists.

Sixteen families in a small coastal town over half a century is the part of this business that cannot be scaled or replicated anywhere else. Almost none of it is written down.

We will not publish the commercial structure. We cannot write about it accurately without understanding it.
Names are useful to us even if we end up not publishing them.
Tell it however you heard it. Second-hand is fine. If two people in the room have different versions, write both down rather than settling on one.
No is a completely acceptable answer and it saves building a page we then have to strip out.
Jobs, seasonal work, local supply, anything concrete.

Chapter one · Place

The film opens on coastline with no buildings and no people, and the homepage does the same. This is the words that sit under that footage.

Distance from Melbourne and Sydney, nearest town, how you actually get there.
Gabo Island and Shipwreck are already on the list as candidates for provenance releases. What are the others, and which are safe to publish without handing a competitor a map?
Currents, water temperature, exposure, reef structure, nutrient flow. Be as technical as you like, we will translate it.
Croajingolong, marine parks, anything a reader could verify independently.
One or two sentences. The sort of line that ends up as the first sentence on the homepage.
Specific reef names, access points, anything that would help a competitor or a poacher.

Chapter two · Ocean

This chapter carries the wild versus farmed argument, which makes it the place a distributor or a regulator will check us. It needs to be precise.

Blacklip abalone, Haliotis rubra? Is greenlip also handled? Should the scientific name appear on the site?
A number here is worth a paragraph of adjectives.
Quota system, total allowable catch, who sets it, stock assessment. MSC is off the table, that was made clear in February and nothing here reopens it. The question is what accurate, defensible sustainability statement we can make instead.
A Victorian Fisheries Authority page or a published stock assessment gives the claim third-party weight without claiming a certification the business does not hold.
How it is set, how it has moved over the years, and what people outside the industry get wrong about it. Nobody is being asked to speak for the fishery, just to describe what it is actually like to work inside a quota.
Texture, colour, shell, taste, how it behaves when cooked. Your words, not ours.

Chapter three · Harvest

The brief is clear that the market does not care much for divers, so there is no diver-led content being built and nobody is being profiled. This chapter is about conditions, scarcity and limits. Your account of the work still matters, it just sits behind the product rather than in front of it.
Exact phrasing matters for the wild claim.
Flagged in July: August and September, and sometimes early October, can be too windy to dive safely. A real number does more for the scarcity argument than any adjective.
"Processed same day" was flagged in February as something we could not claim, and it has not been used since. What is the accurate version?
The limits are the story.
Optional, and it may never appear on the site. It is the sort of detail that makes the difference between copy that sounds like an abalone exporter and copy that sounds like this one.

Chapter four · Craft

The direction to Sam and Will was hands, precision, individual pieces, nothing that looks like a factory. The copy has to hold the same line, and right now there is almost nothing on file to write it from.

Grading and processing. If nobody in the room has spent time on the floor, skip the section. If someone has, this is the thinnest part of the whole project and anything they can add is worth having.

One person, a team, an accumulated process? Also worth separating: is it 40 years of grading skill, or 40 years of processing method developed in-house? Both have been used and they are different claims.
Special Select and One Whole Piece come from the label brief. What is the full ladder?
This is the most concrete proof of craft available and there is nothing on file for it.
Live, whole frozen, canned in brine 425g. Other sizes, packs or formats?
Frozen goes to food processors in Japan and to HoReCa in China, Canada and domestically, and it has no chapter, no footage and no copy.
Tell us where to stop.
Oxygenated holding, how long they can be held, how they travel, which markets take live. Will is shooting the tank in slow motion as a hero clip and it needs copy against it.
EssentialCertifications, and one thing we need to correct.
HACCP, Halal, Export Registration, Shire Food Premises Registration and Licenced Fish Receiving in VIC/NSW, with the instruction that none of the certificates are to be visible in any way. Applied, and no certificate will appear on the website.

Two things still need a decision. First, may we state in words that the facility is HACCP and Halal certified, given the Halal logo is going on the label? Second, the film brief currently specs the video end cards to carry a "certification line", which contradicts the same instruction. Confirm below and we will strip it from the end card spec before Will edits.
It is a third-party mark rather than a certificate, so it may sit outside the rule above. Worth being explicit.
The label declares water, abalone, salt, acidity regulator (331), colour retention agent (223), antioxidant (385), and contains sulphites. The site argues purity and no artificial environments. A distributor or a regulator will put those two things side by side, so it is better to decide the framing now than to be asked about it later.

Chapter five · Table

The Sydney shoot is deferred to Phase 2. The copy is not. This chapter carries the price argument, and the March photography feedback was explicit that gifting, banquets and premium dining are the value area for canned wild product.

Where the product ends up. Overseas markets buy this for gifting, banquets and fine dining, and none of that is obvious from Mallacoota. If anyone has been to market, or heard it back from those who have, this is worth a few minutes. If not, skip it.

The markets on file are Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, China, Canada and domestic.
Straight from the can, braised, in a dish? Serving guidance is high-value QR landing page content and there is none on file.
Related: the board leave-behind quotes farmed at $8 to $12 a can against EX1191 at $40 to $60, and Singapore volumes falling from 12 containers to 3. Those figures came from us. Are they right, and may any of them be published?

Markets, distributors and the QR system

EssentialImporter and distributor names.
The instruction in February was that importer details stay off the website, because published customer lists would serve as a playbook for competitors targeting those channels. We have not built anything that shows them. Confirm the posture, including for anything sitting behind a login, since a gated page is still a page.
EssentialRetail is a reasonable chunk of the business but not all of it, and the site needs to reach hotel, restaurant and catering groups too. How should that split work?
Spec sheets, shelf-life data, pack configurations, images, video, claims they can safely repeat.
The list gates both the end cards and the QR pages behind them.
ImportantFor product packed under a customer's brand, how much EX 1191 identity may the QR page carry?
They are standing in a shop or holding a gift, on a phone, with about twenty seconds of patience. The QR has been on the radar for two years and it is the one piece of real estate owned on every white-label pack.
EssentialWhat can the QR code actually be tied to?
This determines whether "traceable to the harvest area" is a claim we can make or one we have to drop. The label allows space for batch, drained weight and best-before.
Narrowed to those on 3 March, with Malaysian and Thai to follow if those markets grow, and French if exports to Canada resume. Also needed: Simplified or Traditional characters, and which for which market. That affects both the site and the label.
The label brief already requires a native speaker or market representative to check Chinese wording. The same rule should apply to the website and the film subtitles. Names, and which language each covers.
Trade enquiries, consumer questions, and anything from Austrade, who were named as a target audience in the board leave-behind. Is the published contact a mobile, a general address, or something new? With the office short-staffed, a form that funnels everything into one inbox may not be the right answer.
The Luxury Ladder and the volume-versus-prestige framing are a strategy document as much as a message. Some of it probably stays internal.

Claims register

This is the fix for what happened with the concept copy in February, when same-day processing and MSC both went into a draft that could not support them. Agreeing the list once, in writing, means it gets built in as a constraint rather than caught in review. Whatever comes back here governs the website, the QR pages, the distributor deck and the on-screen text in the film. It is on your form only, because five people ticking these boxes gives five opinions and no decision.

Mark each line Yes, No or Reword. There is a notes box underneath.

Anything a competitor could challenge, anything DAFF or a market regulator would query, anything that is simply not true yet.

Voice, and the site as it stands

It changes every sentence on the site.
Mallacoota Abalone, the co-op, EX 1191, something else entirely. There are four versions of the name in our paperwork and we would rather build the site around the one people already use.
ImportantShould Charles appear by name as CEO, or should the business speak without a named individual?
EssentialWebsite colour direction, and a conflict we need to resolve this week.
The film is being graded to sit against dark navy and black backgrounds with red and gold, which is what the film brief specifies and what Will is shooting to now. The label brief, written on 14 August, says to avoid black as a dominant premium colour for cultural reasons, avoid navy that reproduces as black, and build the Special Select around Ocean Blue. Those two directions do not agree, and the website has to pick one.
The film brief leaves voiceover as TBC, and the original proposal promised English and Mandarin cuts. If it needs a script, subtitles or a translated version, that is the same writing job as the website and should be scoped alongside it rather than after the edit.
Whisky, tea, wagyu, olive oil, watches, anything. Much faster than describing tone in the abstract.
Already on the list from our side: premium seafood solutions, passion, journey, world-class, elevate. Add yours.
Please do not treat any of it as decided. That is what this questionnaire is for.

Anything else

The most useful box on the form is usually the last one.

Be blunt.
Particularly anyone older who was here early on and is not in the room today. If it is easier for me to sit down with them than send a link, say so and I will arrange it.
The board and family version is at the same address without /charles on the end. It only has the story chapters, none of the business detail. Names and email addresses, or just tell me who to chase and I will do it.
✓

Answers received, thank you

This goes straight into the words that sit against Will’s footage. If anything else comes back to anyone later, email Matt at matt@yourmateagency.com.au or ring 0478 101 521.

Straight into the website copy. Your answers are still saved on this device, so you can reopen this page and check what you sent. Anything else, email matt@yourmateagency.com.au.