Zirkle Fruit Company

Zirkle Fruit Company, one of the nation’s largest growers of fresh apples, pears, cherries and blueberries, hired Enigma to develop a public relations campaign.  Due to Zirkle Fruit’s large company size, they had experienced lawsuits from various organizations too frequent for owner Bill Zirkle to be comfortable with.  These lawsuits, although meritless, damaged the community brand Zirkle Fruit had been organically developing over decades as a family-owned farm.  Media organizations capitalized on these situations and ran half-truth stories enraging consumers and sending the Zirkle Fruit brand into a downward spiral.
 
Our task had three parts - regain the relationship and trust with their employees, re-establish a fruitful (no pun intended) relationship with their community and eliminate the lawsuits.  Our strategy accomplished all three issues.  Like many farmers, the Zirkles were no different in their desire to maintain a certain anonymity regarding their size and level of success.  After all, they were really just farmers; very successful ones, but they still put on their work boots - one foot at a time.  Not only did the successful growth create such an enormous challenge with their public perception, but the growth inevitably created gaps between management, ownership, and the key to the company’s success; their employees. Their problem seemed two sided with what appeared to be an insurmountable task to overcome. So they thought . . .

After researching and surveying key employees and random samples of residents in key markets, the internal perception problems mirrored the external problems.  With the results being curiously similar. Enigma was able to develop programs and communication strategies around solving both the internal and external perception issues with an approach of utilizing one theme, but tailoring communications to two different audiences. This plan began the reestablishment of the original goal of being viewed as a family-owned farm company who still believes in strong family values. The programs developed reinstated meaningful relationships and established loyalty.  Enigma utilized a philanthropic approach in building the Zirkle brand to support the owners’ desire to remain private in their business affairs, but project their passion of supporting community initiatives.  The public relations campaign showed both Zirkle Fruit and the employees supporting community-based programs while conveying shared values with the partnering organizations. By their strength in providing media support, many local non-profits saw several years of growth and awareness they may not have been able to accomplish on their own.  These messages built a community-minded Zirkle brand while helping other organizations achieve their goals.  The third task, minimizing the heat of lawsuits, was accomplished as a direct result of achieving the first two objectives. We turned Zirkle Fruit employees into their best sales staff by becoming a bigger part of the “family business”.  Employees were proud to be a part of the Zirkle brand and what the family supported.

The message was infectious.  Through community outreach programs, consumers were no longer upset, but rather grateful for everything Zirkle Fruit did to sponsor non-profit organizations.  The branding efforts resulted in happy people who continue to defend the brand. The media began losing audience support to write gloomy stories and lawyers couldn’t find anyone willing to go against a brand loved by so many people.