As a business, it’s easy to celebrate the big wins and move quickly past the small ones. Time goes by too fast, and in the world of PR, you are often knocking one thing out and moving on to the next. As we wrap up 2021, we’re taking time to reflect on some of the highlights of the year for the Dittoe PR team.
Coming Back Together
Our company culture is of the utmost importance. And we’d be lying if we said it didn’t take a bit of a hit in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s face it, remote happy hours definitely don’t replace in-person time with each other, working, collaborating and sharing personal life updates. A major highlight of 2021 was our team slowly and safely coming back together in a hybrid work environment. Next year, we’ll continue to create opportunities for our team to spend time together and ensure we maintain our incredible culture because we also know it impacts how we deliver for our clients.
Award Wins
We headed into 2021 with some incredible award wins for our agency. Dittoe PR was named one of America’s Best PR Agencies for 2021 by Forbes. Megan Custodio was named a PRNEWS Top Women in PR honoree. And our work on the Question How You Hydrate Campaign led us to winning Ragan and PR Daily’s Media Relations Awards in the Purpose-Driven Campaign category.
While we love helping our clients get the recognition they deserve, we are equally proud to be recognized in several awards programs this year:
- Bulldog PR Awards: Gold Award in the Best Food & Beverages Campaign category for our efforts supporting client Vita Coco.
- Ragan’s 2021 Media Relations Awards: Honorable Mention in the Purpose-Driven Campaign category for our work on EXHALE, the first emotional well-being app for and by Black, Indigenous and Women of Color.
New Clients
We are fortunate that so many of our clients have partnered with us for years, many for more than a decade. We also added several incredible organizations to our client roster in 2021, including Evertel, SAGE, Newfields Winterlights, United States Parachute Association, Plastic Credit Exchange, Arts Council of Indianapolis, JBT, ClusterTruck, TreeRing, Physique 57 and more. It’s a privilege to be working alongside these organizations to take their PR efforts to the next level.
Promotions
Creating growth opportunities for our team has been a priority for Dittoe PR since we started our business in 1999. In fact, “Here We Grow” is one of our core values as an organization. Many of our team members experienced significant growth in 2021, and the following individuals were promoted:
- Megan Custodio: Senior Vice President
- Ashley Shuler: Director of Accounts
- Skylar Whitney: Senior Social Media Strategist
- Sarah Cox: Senior Account Manager
- Kaitlyn Elpers: Senior Account Manager
- Shelby Kaiser: Senior Account Manager
- Sara Owens: Senior Account Manager
- Natalie Weber: Senior Account Manager
- Janet Haver: Account Executive
- Cooper Robinson: Account Executive
- Ali Westergren: Account Executive
- Gabby Crays: Social Media Manager
Standout Campaigns
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, we are lucky to work with so many incredible organizations that are making a huge impact in their local markets, across the nation and globally. It’s hard to choose just a few successful client events and campaigns from 2021 to highlight, but the following are top of mind:
Vita Coco Initial Public Offering
Leading coconut water brand and Dittoe PR client The Vita Coco Company made its public debut on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in October 2021. Dittoe PR collaborated with Vita Coco’s investor relations firm to promote the company milestone to beverage industry, national business and national consumer media.
For the first time ever for Dittoe PR, our team had the opportunity to be on-site at Nasdaq for the listing day to coordinate media interviews, experience the bell-ringing ceremony and celebrate Vita Coco’s IPO. Secured media coverage ran in CNBC.com, Fast Company, Food Dive, PEOPLE Magazine and more, with the overall sentiment of the media coverage being positive. Check out “COCO” on the market!
Bottleworks Grand Opening
Together, Dittoe PR and the Bottleworks team weathered the storm of opening a gigantic hospitality development safely in the middle of the global pandemic, cultivating a one-of-a-kind experience that fills Indianapolis with joy and pride. In 2021, Bottleworks’ media coverage resulted in:
- Over 300 placements in local, regional, trade and national media
- 637 million media impressions
Not Another Second Exhibit
The Not Another Second campaign shines a light on the challenges and sacrifices of LGBT+ seniors while highlighting housing discrimination issues through a candid glimpse into the lives of 12 LGBT+ senior men and women. As a result of partnering with Dittoe PR, from December 2020 to March 2021, the campaign received:
- 161 media hits
- 2.8 billion media impressions
- Ad equivalency of more than $26 million
New Hires
With so many amazing clients to work with, we found ourselves needing to add some experienced PR pros to our growing team. We choose new team members carefully, as making the right hire is critical to ensuring we uphold our values as an organization and further our industry-leading work on behalf of clients. We proudly welcomed the following talented team members this year:
- Haley Collins
- Maddie Greer
- Janet Haver
- Madison Scott
- Siddharth Sinha
- Andi Sommers
The Dittoe PR Baby Boom
While we’re on the topic of growing our work family, we can’t forget to mention that several of our Dittoe PR teammates expanded their own families this year. In just a few months, we welcomed four future PR pros to the Dittoe PR family:
- Vanessa Stepanek: Penelope Louise, born June 8
- Greta Snell: Griffin Paul, born July 11
- Shelby Kaiser: Cecilia Jean, born July 16
- Megan Custodio: James Holden, born Aug. 30
Social Media Campaign
In mid-March, madness swept across Indianapolis starting with Selection Sunday and ending when Baylor was crowned the 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Division I Champions – and Dittoe PR had a front-row seat. We partnered with Indiana Sports Corp and the NCAA Final Four to manage each organization’s social media accounts. Live-tweeting 67 games plus sharing ongoing content around ancillary events, youth programs and community impact across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook required a full-court press from our social media team. In the end, our efforts resulted in:
- 22,738 new followers across ISC and Final Four’s social media accounts
- Over 2 million engagements
- More than 43 million impressions
Top PR Blog
We love sharing our knowledge of the ever-evolving PR industry. We’re thrilled that the Dittoe PR blog/website was named a top 100 PR blog and website based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority and freshness.
We hope that your year has also been full of major milestones and accomplishments. As you move into 2022, please let us know how we can support your public relations, social media and communications efforts.
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