We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Allison Schroeder a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Allison, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Naming a company is harder than it sounds. In the public relations agency world, especially, many business owners go one of two routes: either the founder names the company after themselves, or they find a ‘power’ word that speaks to their creativity.

in 2014, when I decided to set out on my own, I faced this struggle for myself. I couldn’t bring myself to name my company after myself. It felt like an old-school, Mad Men-era thing to do. And from the beginning, even though I started out as most do, as an independent practitioner, I had aspirations of turning my company into an agency – a team.

Cycling through a number of power words without much inspiration, I began to explore words in other languages and cultures. Enter pomme. French for apple, pomme is both elegant and simple. Familiar and exotic. I studied French growing up and lived in French-speaking countries. It just fit. As our business continues to grow, we serve a number of clients in the food, beverage and hospitality space, and they enjoy the nod to food in our name.

As a food, apples are versatile. Even in French, the word pomme is used several ways: pomme (apple), pomme frites (french fries) or pomme de terre (potato), etc. Versatility is an important element to our business.

Allison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Pomme Communications specializes in public relations, marketing activations and strategic partnerships.

Despite a background largely on the agency side, I found myself on working on the client side of things in 2014, and was longing for the excitement of projects, pitching and variety. I founded Pomme in September of that year and began taking on projects that allowed me to stretch my media relations muscles once again.

Through our successes, we grew largely by referral and word-of-mouth, as clients began to notice our unique approach to creating creative strategic plans that centered around measurable calls-to-action.

We have had the privilege of working with organizations of all sizes, from the donut shop down the street to billion-dollar brands. Our activations have engaged hundreds of thousands of people and brought so much fun along the way. We have had the opportunity to tell meaningful stories and share a true human connection. Through our work, we even helped crowd-source the return of a wallet that had been missing for more than 50 years – which took us to Australia!

While we like to have fun, we also like to support causes that are important to the community. As an agency, we are avid supporters of local cancer care and have co-founded a collaborative that brings together all cancer-related non-profits to better support one another.

Any advice for managing a team?

The agency business is a tough one. Tight deadlines, tough clients, high expectations. A media cycle that doesn’t stop. It’s easy to face burnout when you’re catching heat from all sides.

Having seen a variety of different approaches to building culture in this world (or lack thereof), team building has been a priority of mine. Especially having a remote workforce, it’s even more important to find ways to foster connection and collaboration.

We will do monthly team outings which will include an activity. This has included everything from bowling to visiting a museum to renting an igloo. I also take the team on an annual retreat, which gives us the opportunity to reconnect, relax and recharge ahead of our busy season.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

Sales, especially in the PR space, is very relationship-driven. Understanding how those relationships work and really listening to their values is critical to making a connection that will lead to a successful partnership.

Several years ago, I was pitching an ice cream company that has a reputation for being a beloved heritage brand in Cincinnati. It is still a family-owned and operated business and my pitch was to the founder’s daughter and her neice. I’d worked with them as a partner in the past, and was beyond elated at the prospect of working together.

For starters, it helped that I was also already obsessed with ice cream, their brand color and everything about their scoop shops. But in our conversation, we had a very special moment that I’ll always remember. One that really cracked open the hard shell that surrounds the sales process.

I mentioned that growing up, I was very into ballet. (Note: despite my passion and many years of practice, I was never actually good at it, unfortunately.) I recalled that one year in the 90’s the Cincinnati ballet did a photo of the sugar plum fairy en pointe in the scoop shop to promote its annual production of the Nutcracker. The photo was iconic and I had it in my bedroom for years.

The prospective client lit up at the mention of the campaign and was even able to state the exact year. It built this amazing connection and foundation which continues to this day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pommecommunications.com
• Instagram: @pommepr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PommePR
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pommepr/
• Twitter: @pommepr