Case Studies

From 217 press hits in 2002 to 1,800 in 2008, Teuwen One Image has put the wines of France's Loire Valley on the map. Prior to 2002, there was no official Loire presence in the United States, and so with the creation of the Loire Valley Wine Bureau within Teuwen One Image, a flurry of promotion for these fresh, delightful wines began.

Our annual Road Show tastings for trade & media bring winemakers from the Loire to markets all over the country (including New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC) with the goal of increasing their presence and sales. We hold several media dinners in different cities each year, playing with different varietals, AOCs, and themes, and these are supported by press releases, sampling programs, and individual contact with journalists. Loire Valley Wines now also participate in a number of key consumer events including the Boston Wine Expo and the Tanglewood Wine & Food Fest, and a website and printed maps & booklets to distribute to trade all support the campaign. Educational programs with distributors, culinary schools, and the Society of Wine Educators help to cultivate new fans and supporters of Loire Valley wines. The enthusiasm the team brings to each program helps to prove, again and again, that there is such a thing as great French wines without attitude.

Someone had a dream of bringing 40,000 square feet of chocolate to New York City, and Teuwen One Image was instrumental in turning that dream into a reality. We launched the Chocolate Show in New York in 1998. With zero advertising budget, we used all our creativity and connections to build this unknown festival into a major annual four-day consumer event, attracting the world's best chocolate makers both large and small, and growing attendance from 5,000 visitors in the first year to 35,000 in the eighth year. We negotiated partnerships and promotions with major players like Barnes & Noble, NYC & Company, Time Out, and the Viking Range Corporation; we orchestrated the pairing of fashion designers with New York's top pastry chefs for the signature Chocolate Fashion Show, and organized more than 60 cooking demonstrations by the country's top toques. These multiple layers of chocolate-covered excitement added up to a great big media splash every year. Our PR campaign garnered more than 300 television spots in a two-week period, including coverage on the Today Show on NBC, the Early Show on CBS, Good Morning America on ABC, Fox, Food Network, and TV stations around the country. Print coverage appeared nationwide in outlets including The New York Times, Washington Post, Bon Appétit, Elle, Associated Press, and hundreds of others.

D'Artagnan is a pioneer in American foie gras and premium organic meats. For the first time in the company's 20 year history, they hired a PR agency to launch a major campaign to celebrate their big anniversary and raise their public profile. We had an absolute blast organizing media events: a blind turkey tasting pitting D'Artagnan's Heritage and organic birds against the supermarket variety, followed by a celebration of "The Other Red Meats" where media discovered the versatility of D'Artagnan's game meats like Buffalo, Venison, and Ostrich. Teuwen One Image also co-produced 20th Anniversary events including the BirdDay Party for 1,000 guests; The Decadent Lunch in five top restaurants; cooking demonstrations; and the Duckathlon, a gastronomic relay race in which chefs competed fiercely in such events as omelet flipping, blind tastings of wine and spices, and dashing down Manhattan streets in yellow flippers.

During our 18-month campaign we garnered product placements and extensive profiles for D'Artagnan The New York Times, Newsday, the New York Sun, Time Out, New York Magazine, Wine Spectator, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Newsday, Better Homes & Gardens, the Today Show on NBC, CBS MarketWatch and many others.

The U.S. has embraced olive oil during the past decade. However, not all olive oil is created equal. When we began our campaign with O&CO., a retailer of fine olive oil and Mediterranean ingredients, our challenge was to educate media and consumers on the differences between that jug of bland oil from the supermarket and the lively and intense bottles on the shelves at O&CO. We made parallels with wine to explain the tremendous differences in flavor... and cost... between mass market olive oils and those that O&CO. sells. Just like wine, olive oil carries with it a sense of terroir when the olives are grown in one place and are pressed with pride by a true artisan--and also like wine, every vintage of olive oil is unique.

To spread the word about artisanal olive oil, we enlisted chef ambassadors Rick Moonen and Doug Psaltis to demonstrate the culinary wonders of good olive oil. We also created recipes to highlight the unique O&CO. products, including olive oils pressed with fruit and herbs; and tapenades created by Michelin-starred chefs from France. We were able to see that O&CO. products got the praise they deserve in the The New York Times, Newsday, New York Post, the Daily News, O, the Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Time Out New York, Seatte Post-Intelligencer, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Magazine, Boston Herald, Saveur, Details, Lucky, Bon Appétit, as well as on Food Network and the CBS Early Show. To drive sales, we immediately distributed media clips as they appeared to the 11 O&CO. stores.

In addition to consumer outreach, we helped to build O&CO.'s wholesale business, obtaining placements in Gourmet Retailer, Gourmet News, Santé, and Fancy Food and Culinary Products Magazine.

In Belgium -- a small country that produces over 1800 different beers -- knowledge of pairing food and beer is second nature, but until recently in the U.S., beer was never invited into the dining room. Labatt USA partnered with Teuwen One Image to change all that.

The goal of our campaign was to position the line of Belgian Beers -- Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Leffe Blonde, Leffe Brown, and Bellevue -- as ideal accompaniments to food. To accomplish this, we needed to educate and motivate restaurants to bring beer beyond the bar and serve it with meals in the same way they would wine.

To add excitement and focus to the campaign, Labatt enlisted Herwig Van Hove, a famous TV personality in Belgium, as well as a renowned chef and cookbook author, chemistry professor, and wine and beer critic. We produced a two week Belgian beer and food festival for media, trade, and the public, with Chef Van Hove as the spokesman. He created a special menu which was offered to the public at Markt, New York's premier Belgian restaurant. We also organized a trade tasting and a fully booked media tasting at Markt where Chef Van Hove held the crown rapt with a presentation on the chemistry of food and beer.

Our campaign garnered extensive New York media coverage including Chef Van Hove's recipes paired with beers, a beer tasting on television, and a feature in the Robb Report, a national luxury lifestyle magazine. The majority of the restaurateurs invited to the seminars added at least one Belgian beer to their menus, and Labatt USA used our campaign as a model for events in other markets.

The producers of the World Tea Expo (WTE) hired us to create a veritable tempest in a teacup, turning this new tea-focused trade show into the industry's must-go event. We brewed a dynamic media relations campaign establishing WTE as the hub of the tea industry and a key source of information for all things tea. To create buzz, we secured the participation of top local chefs including Rick Moonen, Kerry Simon, Jo'l Antunes, and Hugh Acheson to conduct Cooking with Tea demonstrations at the Las Vegas 2006 and Atlanta 2007 shows. We executed parallel PR campaigns aimed at both trade and consumer media, focusing on industry growth and hot new products in this booming category, and positioning WTE founder George Jage as a visionary entrepreneur.

In addition to calendar listings in all major trade publications, we secured coverage surrounding WTE events--Top Chef Demonstrations, North America's first Tea Auction, and the annual Iced Tea Shake-Off-as well as trend stories and features on exhibitors' products. Articles appeared in Nation's Restaurant News, Santé, Fresh Cup, Progressive Grocer, Gourmet Retailer, Gourmet News, Supermarket News, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, Tea House Times, Tradeshow Week, TIME, LIFE, New York Post, Las Vegas Sun, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Associated Press; television coverage included CW, CBS, and Fox. Another measure of our success: attendance of the World Tea Expo grew by 59% in the first year of our campaign, and was up to 67% in the second year.

The chocolate market is a crowded one but, after tasting our way through this brand-new line of premium chocolate bars made in the Berkshire mountains, we were in love. We helped Berkshire Bark Chocolate define their brand and together we launched four unique bars--jam-packed with roasted nuts, citrus zest, hunks of dried fruit, pretzels, toffee, peanut butter and other good things--at the Chocolate Show in New York in November 2006. We started off with a bang, placing Berkshire Bark on the Today Show the morning the Chocolate Show opened, generating thousands of visits to the Berkshire Bark booth and to their website. Over the course of a year-long campaign, we garnered placements in major regional and national publications including New York Times, Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Metro newspapers, Woman's Day, and the Rachael Ray Show.

How do you sell 5,000 glasses of wine from an unknown part of France in an afternoon? By turning South Street Seaport into a tableau vivant of one of the most famous paintings of all time. Hire 40 actors and dress them up as if they've just stepped out of a Renoir, sail a boat loaded with refreshing Muscadet wine all the way from France (complete with authentic French sea captain), and open an outdoor café, artists' studio, and dance hall, of course.

To introduce New York to Muscadet, one of France's most popular white wines, Teuwen One Image did just that. For an afternoon, Manhattan's historic riverfront was transported back in time. Partnerships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Utrecht Art Supplies added dimension to the event, and a trade tasting was held simultaneously. Through a press campaign that included Impressionist-themed press kits and picnic baskets and one-one contact with media, we garnered over 150 placements in print, radio, and television media including Wine Spectator, Food Arts, The New York Times, and CNN.

Ten years ago, Milos pioneered upscale Greek dining, offering the freshest fish from the Mediterranean paired with excellent unknown Greek wines. Caught by small fishermen and flown into the restaurant's own seafood market several times a week, a simple grilling drizzle of extra-virgin Greek olive oil is the only way to prepare fish this fresh.

The concept of the restaurant is deceptively simple, and it took a creative, full-force campaign to convey to the media that Milos truly is a temple of seafood and haute Greek cuisine. We helped organize some truly memorable events including a grand midnight feast on Greek Easter featuring seven whole lambs roasting on the sidewalk; a buffet of 100 cold and hot dishes to introduce My Sisters Olive Oil, Milos' own label; a week-long bouillabaisse competition between a French chef and a Greek chef; and a Wines & Cheeses from Greece festival to educate the media on these two important Greek ingredients. Five wineries were represented, and more than 50 cheeses were shipped (or smuggled!) from Greece.

The media responded with great enthusiasm to our ongoing outreach and unforgettable events. Press coverage has included The New York Times, Gourmet, the Today Show, GQ, W, and The New Yorker.

In a city where new restaurants come and go with alarming speed, it is no small achievement to thrive for more than 15 years, and Teuwen One Image is proud to be a part of the success of North Square Restaurant and Lounge. Open since 1992 (originally called C3), the restaurant has evolved over the years, and we have been their partner since 2001.

From the beginning, we've conducted an extensive press campaigns to encourage reviews and to feature recipes for Chef Yoel Cruz's specialties for every season in the local media. As the restaurant has matured we have structured a long-term marketing plan for keeping excitement alive with the media and the public, helping to plan, and then publicizing, special events such as winemaker and beer brewer dinners, seasonal dinners celebrating the local harvest (wild mushrooms, squash); and classes on wine, spirits, and tea.

We successfully campaigned to get North Square invited to join the roster of the city's finest dining establishments for New York Restaurant Week. We have also been key in getting North Square involved in other high-profile food world events including DIFFA's Dining by Design, the James Beard Foundation's Chefs & Champagne®.

Over the years, North Square has been featured extensively New York publications including the Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, The New York Times, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine.

1999 was the year of the brasseries. New ones were suddenly opening right and left, but Les Halles had been a pioneer, serving up steak-frites on Park Avenue for ten years. They hired us to create a PR campaign cementing their status as New York's definitive French brasserie. Little did they know when we began that their chef, Anthony Bourdain, would become one of the most famous--and infamous--chefs in the nation!

Our dynamic program combined media relations and events including the annual "Choucroute Halles of Fame" with a prominent "choucroute personality" each year; the Oysters & Chablis festival; Game Month; Halle-o-ween; Beaujolais nouveau release party; and a 10th anniversary blowout.

For three years we also co-produced and publicized the Bastille Day Waiters' Race, transforming a stretch of 60th Street into a Belle Epoque street carnival complete with can-can dancers, stiltwalkers, mimes, and painters. Additionally, we launched a new restaurant location, Les Halles Downtown, and kicked off the publicity campaign for Anthony Bourdain's book, Kitchen Confidential.

For the array of events we produced and publicized with Les Halles, we garnered event coverage and feature articles in hundreds of local and national outlets including The New York Times, Daily News, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Food Network, Nation's Restaurant News, Time Out, People, Elle, and Wine Spectator. With over 15,000 spectators, 47 television hits and 20 print media placements for the Waiters' Race alone, Les Halles attracted more media coverage in one day than most restaurants get in a year.

New York Mutual Trading Company (MTC), one of the country's largest importers of Japanese food products and restaurant supplies, had been conducting its annual trade show in the parking lot of its New Jersey warehouse for 12 years. In 2006 MTC set out to raise the profile of the show, for the first time moving the venue to Manhattan, and hiring Teuwen One Image to attract a wider audience including influential media and chefs from the region's best restaurants of every cuisine, not just Japanese.

For the show we organized cooking demonstrations by top chefs including Johan Svensson of Aquavit, and Bill Yosses, who we managed to catch before he left for Washington to be the White House pastry chef!

At the core of our 2006 media campaign was our promotion of "MTC Premium," the company's new line of high-end offerings-ingredients produced by Japan's most skilled and passionate artisans, including real Wagyu beef, sea salt smoked over cherry wood fires, live miso, purple sweet potato vinegar, and soy sauce aged in 100 year old cider barrels. All of these items became an instant sensation among the nation's culinary cognoscenti.

For our 2007 campaign we placed a special focus on the growing category of premium sake and shochu. Beverage media including Wine & Spirits and Dale DeGroff's KingCocktail.com were drawn to the show's huge selection of artisan-made offerings as well as beginning and advanced workshops on these beverages, innovative sake and shochu cocktail demonstrations, and sake and cheese pairing classes with Max McCalman, maitre fromagier of Artisanal.

We fulfilled MTC's chief goal of achieving show coverage in all major national and regional trade publications. Through our media outreach, the editors at Food & Wine, Gourmet, and Saveur also fell head-over-heels for these remarkable ingredients. They created such a demand for MTC Premium ingredients that, although the company had originally only planned on selling the products wholesale to restaurants, they decided to branch out to retail as well. Within a year, MTC was able to introduce the Premium products to the buyers of Dean & Deluca, Sur La Table, and Whole Foods.

While some companies hire a PR agency with the goal of garnering high-profile consumer media placements, other companies choose to take a different approach with the launch of a new product by first conducting a campaign with the trade media. Teuwen One Image has successfully launched several products with integrated campaigns tailored to this specialized category of media. We have recently conducted trade media campaigns for three different supermarket products: Daregal Frozen Herbs, Gourmet on the Go, and Soignon Couturier Goat Cheese.

Daregal has been growing and selling herbs in France for over a century, and their line of frozen herbs are a staple in every modern French household. However, the entire concept of fresh herbs from the freezer was brand-new to the U.S. when Daregal launched in supermarkets here in 2007.

In conjunction with our outreach and sampling campaign to the retail trade media, Daregal wished to conduct an ad campaign for the duration of National Frozen Food Month (a.k.a., March.)Ê We researched and negotiated ad buys to achieve the maximum amount of reach with the client's designated budget.Ultimately, we purchased print ads, web banners, and e-newsletter sponsorships across several publications and communicated with Daregal's creative agency to finalize ad design.

We conducted a sampling campaign for the trade media, which led to placements in publications including Fancy Food & Culinary Products, Catering Magazine, and Progressive Grocer. Additionally, we created booth animation, recipes, and a sampling strategy for the 2008 Summer Fancy Food Show that would make the Daregal booth and its products stand out from the crowd.

Starting from scratch just a little more than a year ago, Daregal now has its frozen herbs in more than 900 stores in several major supermarket chains throughout the Northeast.

St. Dalfour, the venerable French company known for its collection of premium fruit preserves, teamed with Teuwen One Image to launch Gourmet on the Go™, an all-natural line of shelf-stable, ready-to-eat meals. Gourmet on the Go™ quickly became a hit with the retail trade media, with placements in The Gourmet Retailer, Specialty Food News, Gourmet News, Progressive Grocer, and Fancy Food & Culinary Products -- and we just couldn't resist placing it in The New York Times as well.

Soignon-Couturier, a stalwart of the goat cheese industry, hired us to introduce three unique products to the U.S. market: Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) goat cheese medallions for foodservice, creamy spreadable goat cheese for retail, and crumbled goat cheese in a unique package for retail. We began by creating a comprehensive media kit for Soignon-Couturier. Then, we partnered with celebrated New York chefs Bill Telepan and Will Goldfarb to create unique menus with Soignon's IQF goat cheese and invited top editors from foodservice trade magazines to their restaurants for one-on-one lunches.Ê To launch the spreadable and crumbled goat cheese products, we conducted targeted sampling campaigns for the retail trade media. Our trade campaign led to placements in Restaurant Business Magazine, Chef Magazine, Deli Business Magazine, Dairy Business Magazine, Gourmet Retailer, and Today's Grocer, in addition to placements in consumer publications such as the Daily News and Real Simple.