Toronto-based The PR Department has named Debora Marques as a partner alongside president and founder Brigitte Foisy.
Among other things, Marques (pictured) has been instrumental in achieving success with the agency’s client Maille mustard, a Unilever France brand, Foisy says. The boutique agency has been Maille’s AOR in Canada for two years and is currently conducting a three-city activation for the brand.
Marques has been at The PR Department since 2012, first as a consultant and later as account manager. She will helm media relations and activation at the firm and oversee staffing.
“She complements me with her skills and most of all her diplomacy,” Foisy says.
Foisy, who has more than 20 years of public relations experience, says she has had many offers to take on a business partner over the years, but “none of them ever felt right until now.”
The PR Department built Maille’s website and is handling the brand’s social media, media relations, digital strategy and activations.
Its current activation, the Maille Flavour Studio, kicked off at the Taste of Toronto festival in late June and garnered 3.3 million impressions from media coverage and more than 1.5 million social media impressions.
In each city, foodies can make their own gourmet flavoured mustard, taste unique mustards and cornichons and buy fresh mustard on tap and other gourmet products at a Maille pop-up shop. Maille’s headmaster mustard sommelier Harry Lalousis is also hosting cooking workshops.
The activation continues in Vancouver at the Columbia strEAT Food Truck Fest on Aug. 20 and finishes at YUL EAT in Montreal on Labour Day weekend.
Aside from Maille, other recent account wins for the agency include St. Regis non-alcoholic wines, risotto brand Riso Gallo and Toronto furniture maker Boss Leather.
In the past year, the firm has also opened a new digital division and a direct to consumer sampling service. It now has five full-time employees and seven part-timers.
As a boutique agency “we certainly don’t make as much as the big guys and we’re okay with that.” However, “the ideas, the strategic thinking and the results that come out of this shop are in line and often exceed those of the big agencies. I honestly believe that big brands get a bigger bang for their money with boutique agencies like ours.”
