Harvest PR was on fire at the Best of NAMA Awards, sponsored by the National Agri-Marketing Association, winning six national awards. The company won four first-place honors in the following categories: Producer or Company-funded Public Relations Program to Consumers, News or Feature Article, Digital Presentation and, for the second year in a row, News Release. In the News Release category, Harvest PR smoked the competition, taking home the second-place merit award,as well. Harvest PR also won the merit for Web site – Educational Focus, Directed to Consumers.

News of Seed to Succeed, Harvest PR’s first non-profit grant offering, is sprouting up all around the agriculture community. AgriMarketing, AgWired and the American Agricultural Editors’ Association have all published information on this $20,000 giveaway. Interested? Be sure to apply by May 15.

Are you a non-profit hungry for some seed money? Listen up. Harvest PR is donating $20,000 in PR services to one non-profit organization in the farm-to-table community. If you or someone you know could benefit from a year of free marketing communications support, check out our Seed to Succeed PR grant. Submissions are due May 15. We are excited to hear from you!

To generate lift for a media event in Chicago for Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Harvest PR created an eye-opening and experiential invitation. Custom View-Masters took targeted reporters on a 3D tour of the convenient alternative to Chicago’s O’Hare, while enticing them to RSVP for a special MKE event: the “Have a Ball with MKE” media rooftop party. The invitation was a home run: 80 percent of targeted media attended the sold-out Cubs/White Sox game, where MKE launched skymailme.com via skywriting over Wrigley Field. Corporate Event magazine took note, mentioning our strategic thinking in its Working Ideas section, alongside campaigns from Ben & Jerry’s and Harley Davidson.

A pair of Harvest PR team members embarked on a whirlwind two-day media event in New York City showcasing the bounty of the Pacific Northwest. With the help of the dynamic duo, Vitaly and Kimberly Paley, media from publications like Every Day with Rachael Ray, O, The Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Redbook and Woman’s Day wined and dined on some of the best food around. On the menu? Fresh pears, Oregon Pinot, handmade cheeses and the Pacific Northwest’s prized crustacean, Dungeness crab.

National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA), the country’s largest association for professionals in marketing and agribusiness, recently announced winners of the Western Regional Best of NAMA competition.

Harvest PR wrangled six first place awards and one merit in the categories of News or Feature Article, News Release, Internet Web Site, Digital Presentation, Producer or Company Funded Public Relations Program Directed to Consumers and Producer or Company Funded Advertising Directed to Consumers for work done on behalf of Cotton Incorporated, the National Cottonseed Products Association and Pear Bureau Northwest.

In April, all regional award-winning entries will compete at Best of NAMA, the national competition held in Atlanta.

Pear Panache is an award-winning program that honors chefs who create delicious recipes using fresh Northwest pears. Now in its third season, Pear Panache has recognized chefs coast-to-coast and tasted the delicious fruits of their labor, yummy pear-inspired cocktails, soups, salads, appetizers, entrees and desserts.

This season, Harvest PR and Pear Bureau Northwest decided to mix it up and add a new feature to the Web site. Instead of just reading a recipe, visitors to the site can actually watch some of the award-winning chefs prepare their original recipes via “PearCast.”

PRWeek recently spotlighted the unique skywriting campaign dreamed up by Harvest PR & Marketing, Inc., for long-time client General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Milwaukee, Wis.

A bold venture into the social media and viral marketing realms, “the campaign was designed to spread the word through both traditional and new media, and connect the audience with the brand and lure visitors to flyMKE.com,” wrote PRWeek Washington bureau chief Ted McKenna.

Harvest PR hired a skywriter to freehand “skymailme.com” over Chicago’s Wrigley Field during the highly attended Cubs-White Sox game, at which MKE sponsored a rooftop media party. Visitors to the viral site could create their own virtual skywriting message to send to friends and incidentally promote flyMKE.com. Launched in June 2008, the campaign generated a combined 16,000 visits to both Web sites, and northern Illinois traffic at the airport is up 29.3 percent.

Mitchell Airport spokesperson Pat Rowe was quoted: “It was a campaign that really caught the imagination of our target audience and broke through the clutter.”

Last night, the Portland Metro Chapter of PRSA honored the accomplishments of PR professionals throughout the City of Roses with the 2008 Spotlight Awards.  We are pleased to announce that our work was among the winners!  Harvest earned a total of six awards: three prestigious Spotlight Awards and three Awards of Excellence.

Spotlight Awards:
              www.PearPanache.com – Web site – Tactic
              www.CottonseedOilTour.com – Web site – Tactic
              The Bartender’s Guide to Pear Cocktails – Publication – Tactic

Awards of Excellence:
              Cottonseed Oil Comeback Tour – Integrated Marketing Campaign
              Have a ball with MKE – Media Event
              www.SkyMailMe.com – Word of Mouth – Tactic

Harvest PR & Marketing brought home another national award for its work with Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport (MKE). The North American Chapter of Airports Council International’s 2008 Excellence in Marketing & Communications Contest awarded the agency a second place finish in the Special Events category for its “Have a Ball with MKE” media event.

The Chicago rooftop event, designed to launch a new viral campaign for MKE – www.skymailme.com – to Chicagoland air travelers, involved orchestrating a skywriting stunt over the sold-out Cubs-White Sox game at Wrigley Field in June, generating an estimated 2.4 million site impressions within a week of the event.

The “Excellence in Airport Marketing & Communications Contest” honors airport professionals that offer expertise and talent in a variety of categories, including web site design, annual reports, newsletters, advertising campaigns, special event planning and more. The award won by Harvest PR was one of only 31 chosen from more than 300 entries.