In-House PR Team for FIJI, POM, and Teleflora Wins Industry’s Most Prestigious Reward

I’m proud to announce that last week in New York City at the annual Public Relations Week Awards, the Roll PR team was awarded “Best In-House PR Team of the Year,” beating out other semi-finalists McDonald’s, American Red Cross and Deloitte. More than 100 companies submitted entries for this award category, the most prestigious in the industry.

Roll, for those of you who may not know, is the parent company of Water, Teleflora, Wonderful, Paramount Farms, and Cuties. Since we are privately owned, I guess you could say Stewart and I are the “parent.”

Roll's award-winning in-house PR team

Several years ago, we made a corporate commitment to support PR with the same kind of enthusiasm with which we support the other marketing efforts of our companies. We then set about to find the industry’s strongest people who showed an interest in the kind of brands we have and who were happy to work in house. We have created a team of strong professionals who understand the ins and outs of our brand strategies and who are fully integrated into the marketing process with each company they represent.

If you have read my new book Rubies in the Orchard, then you already know that all of our marketing and creative work is done in house, from advertising to product development and product design, and even media buying. Why?

I come from the other side of the business, having owned an advertising agency while I was in my early twenties. Advertising and marketing have been part of my career since the very beginning, so when I moved to the client side, it was an obvious decision to create an in-house agency to do the work.

But there was more to the decision that just my past experience with marketing. In Rubies, I talk about how important a role passion plays in success. I know first-hand that it’s nearly impossible to have the same degree of passion and loyalty for a brand that is a client. When you work directly with the marketing and sales team of a company, you are fully integrated into the business. Ideas surface everyday, and it is an interactive process. Everyone has the same goal: to see that product or service rise to the top.

It doesn’t hurt to have great products to represent. That brings us back to the value proposition I speak about so often. If you are representing a company with a meaningful presence in people’s lives, it sure makes the public relations message easier to place, in a more organic way.

The results of bringing public relations in house have been outstanding, to say the least. In the five years since we decided to grow the department, PR working hand in hand with Marketing, the Web group, Sales and Promotion, we have achieved the following accomplishments:

• Prior to 2005, Teleflora was an industry provider and not a consumer-facing business. Today, it is the number-one floral wire service in the U.S.
• Roll acquired FIJI Water in 2004 and has grown the business more than 300%, making it the number-one imported water brand, having overtaken Evian this year.
• Prior to 2002, the pomegranate juice category did not exist. Today, POM Wonderful is the leading grower, manufacturer, and marketer of fresh pomegranates and pure pomegranate juice.
• Paramount Farms is the world’s largest vertically integrated grower, processor, and marketer of almonds and pistachios. In the past two years, the company has expanded internationally and now exports its products globally to more than 42 countries throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS, India, China, South America, Mexico, and Canada.

Stewart and I so are incredibly proud of this latest accomplishment of our in-house PR team that we’d like to acknowledge each of its members:

Marlyn Denter
Vanessa DeCarbo
Jacqueline Fitzgerald
Sonya Grigoruk
Grace Kang
Missy Miller
Kelli Parnagian
Kelly Plowe
Daniel Portolan
Leah Rubin
Rob Six
April Shunn Williams

You have each done outstanding work. To you, I raise my POMtini in honor.