Neither agricultural anecdotes nor crop conversations are new to Mantiobans. Very few farming-related topics are. But not everyday does a multinational company set up shop in your backyard.
Enter Roquette.
Roquette engaged Think Shift to orchestrate the grand opening of the largest pea protein plant in the world.
Think Shift brought in Dooley PR & Marketing to help achieve strong publicity and public awareness of, and leading up to, the event.
The company opened its plant in Portage la Prairie, MB on Nov. 17, 2021.
Roquette planned high profile (virtual) grand opening celebrations for the new plant that included Canadian celebrities Colonel Chris Hadfield and Chef Michael Smith.
Our team’s role was to earn positive publicity for the company, its new plant and for its role as a
leader in the plant-based protein industry.
We divided our efforts into two initiatives:
Long lead pitching is the act of pitching publications who are working on a cycle ahead of
content being published.
Our original goal was to generate 20 - 22 media clippings for Roquette leading up to (and including) the grand opening event. In regards to long lead pitching, we proactively targeted select media outlets, journalists and freelancers and pitched them story angles providing unique opportunities to examine Roquette and its new plant.
We identified target audiences as food manufacturing businesses, alternative protein businesses, farmers, farm commodity groups, people passionate about new food alternatives and people who are passionate about sustainability.
Given our target audiences, we targeted media publication types like business, food, agriculture, science and engineering, and podcasts within those same niches.
We worked closely with Roquette to develop a variety of pitches to ensure they were on brand and supportive of overall corporate messaging. We then targeted media publications with pitches tailored specifically to its niche.
Ultimately, we pitched 115 media outlets prior to the grand opening. Our long lead pitching resulted in 13 clippings.
We then shifted our focus to preparing for the grand opening event. Much of our long lead pitching referenced the grand opening, so we used the outreach as an opportunity to build interest in the grand opening event.
Well over 750 people attended the grand opening event in total.
Roughly half of the eventual grand opening press conference attendees, of which we had close to 50, were targeted as part of our long lead pitching.
Because Roquette is based in France, we worked with Oxygen PR Agency, which has offices in France, the United States and Asia.
Oxygen pitched its top 15 International media to attend the event and the press conference, and managed much of the European communications.
The grand opening event resulted in 105 additional clippings.
That brings us to 118 total media clippings, to date.
Media Ratings Points (MRP), a Canadian measurement tool, reports a reach of 13,685,066 in Canada on the 81 clippings with data available.
Cision PR Newswire reports the total potential audience reach to be 162,383,689.
With a highly successful PR campaign now behind us (and Roquette), we’ve shifted focus to following up with the outlets who didn’t pick up our news. Our goal is to show them there are fresh story angles to explore, continuing to garner more media attention.
Founded in 1933 and based in France, Roquette is a family-owned company which operates in more than 100 countries, has a turnover of around 3.5 billion euros and employs 8,360 people worldwide.
Roquette is a global leader in plant-based ingredients, a pioneer of plant proteins and a leading provider of pharmaceutical excipients. The group addresses current and future societal challenges by unlocking the potential of nature to offer the best ingredients for food, nutrition and health markets.
Roquette pairs with international companies like Beyond Meat, which chose peas as their plant-based protein alternative. But Roquette also commonly works with start up companies.
Pea protein is about to become more common than you might think.
We run campaigns and marketing for our clients wherever they do business around the world. We serve as expert local counsel for national and international clients looking for marketing and communications services in the Canadian Prairies.
We'd love to work with you, just let us know how we can help your business grow or subscribe to our newsletter.
