Article at a Glance

The image of “Dongwon Group = tuna company” has served as a core asset that helped Dongwon establish itself as a national brand while simultaneously acting as a factor limiting the company’s business expansion and market valuation. Accordingly, Dongwon launched a strategic rebranding for a shift in perception beyond tuna, namely “Beyond Tuna,” and in 2024 formed the Brand Committee to identify Narrative Identity encompassing Dongwon’s history and philosophy and derived a new identity (BI), “The Responsible Answer.” To spread this slogan, Dongwon moved beyond its traditional advertising-centered strategy and fully implemented an owned media strategy of “Brand-as-Publisher.” It also appointed brand campaigners and encouraged working-level staff at affiliates to put the new identity into practice, thereby internalizing it within the corporate culture. This series of moves was part of an effort to consistently communicate the company’s message to both the organization and the market and to reconstruct stakeholder reputation. Although Dongwon’s campaign achieved initial success in that it first introduced the BI through content exposure, the ultimate success of the rebranding experiment depends on how consistently and persistently it can change public brand perception going forward.

---

For Dongwon, which launched Korea’s first canned tuna product in 1982 and has maintained the No. 1 position in the market ever since, “tuna” is a double-edged sword. It has been a powerful asset that built the company as it is today and laid the foundation for it to become a national brand, yet at the same time it has acted as an invisible barrier to the company’s expansion. Despite decades of uninterrupted growth and growing its revenue to around 10 trillion KRW, Dongwon remains a tuna company in the public’s mind. As the group began in 1969 with a single deep-sea fishing vessel, it has not been able to completely shed the labels of “fisheries” and “food business.” While tuna is clearly a valuable piece of Dongwon’s brand heritage, it was also a legacy the company had to move beyond for a greater leap forward.

This dilemma became particularly evident in 2023 when Dongwon Group entered the bidding to acquire HMM, Korea’s largest shipping company. Expecting synergy with its existing container terminal business, the group selected shipping as a future growth engine and attempted the acquisition, but the market responded with surprise mixed with skepticism. Doubts emerged, such as “Is a shrimp trying to swallow a whale?” and “Can a food company operate a national shipping carrier?” Questions were also raised about whether Dongwon had sufficient cash reserves and financing capacity to acquire one of the largest targets in the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) market, with an enterprise value of around 10 trillion KRW. The emergence of the “tuna vs. chicken” frame, referring to the competitive landscape with Harim, which also participated in the bidding at the time, symbolically illustrated the group’s image being confined to traditional industries.

인기기사