Who We Are

Ruskin International is a communications agency specializing in clients in the food, beverage and hospitality industries. Philip Ruskin founded the agency in June of 2002. He possesses over fifteen years of experience developing and implementing consumer marketing and public relations campaigns for clients such as: Pepsi, Beaujolais Wine Bureau, Anheuser Busch, Champagne France, Ecce Panis, HBO, and more than a dozen renowned restaurants. In addition to successful public relations campaigns, Philip has created and produced high-visibility consumer events and promotions such as The Chocolate Show, the nation's largest chocolate festival. This three-day festival features 65 culinary demonstrations and draws over 25,000 attendees. For The Chocolate Show, he created strategic partnerships with Barnes & Noble, KitchenAid, Starchefs.com and the New York City Visitors and Convention Bureau. Philip is also an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University where he teaches Hospitality Marketing at the Graduate School of Business.

The agency has developed extremely strong relationships with consumer and trade media, as well as leading culinary professionals. These relationships, combined with strategic planning, creative thinking, and good old-fashioned hard work enables the agency to assist brands to reach both their consumer and trade marketing objectives.

Ruskin International has a reputation for working with quality products and restaurants. Clients past and present can be found on our Clients page.

How We Work

The agency is an extension of the clients' team, remaining in constant touch by phone, email and fax. We schedule regular conference calls and meetings in which to discuss opportunities and strategies. Working very closely with a client enables the agency to fully understand, share and effectively communicate the message points and achieve the goals of the brand.

Journalists know that they can rely on Ruskin International to understand their needs, meet their deadlines, and provide compelling information about high-quality products.

Agency Services

Public Relations

We implement strategic public relations for our clients with carefully planned media exposure. PR is about getting press coverage, but coverage alone is not the goal. It's about communicating messages that support the building of a brand and generate greater lasting awareness among media and consumers. To achieve this goal, Ruskin International will create brand identity message points, write press and marketing materials, pitch story ideas to the media, and coordinate press events.

Special Events & Promotions

In today's hospitality and media environment, being extraordinarily good is often not good enough. The media looks for what is "new" to put in the news. Our job is to keep our clients on the media radar by continually bringing to their attention items that are exciting, new and noteworthy. This does not mean "gimmicky," but rather creating appealing items that are not only of interest to the journalists, but also of value to the consumer.

Marketing

The agency does marketing in a variety of ways and will work with you to develop, produce and implement effective materials and campaigns. We can assist you with brochures, email blasts, newsletters, stationary, menu design, cards, and endless other materials to convey your message effectively. We have relationships with first rate printers, designers, photographers and stylists and manage production from start to finish to ensure that your finished products reflect your taste and vision.

Product Introductions

We are poised to launch new products, restaurants or services to the media and the public. We will help you to reach your target audience and build awareness prior to and throughout the launch with media placements and events. Some examples of product launches handled by the agency are: Spiegelau's first ever tabletop collection: Light and Strong; Maple Leaf Farms' Duck A L'Orange and Peking Duck; Ciao Bella Sorbet's wine flavors: Blackberry Cabernet, Blood Orange Champagne, Apricot Chardonnay, Port and Fig, along with Tequila flavors; Les Halles' specialty food market; Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook.

Product Positioning & Strategic Planning

Together with the client we ask: What are you about, what are your strengths and attributes, what sets you apart? Also: Who are your consumers/customers now, and who would you like to attract? How would you like to grow? This helps us to come up with a strategic plan on where to position the client and to communicate the key message points effectively to the right audience.

Culinary Events & Demos

We coordinate events both large and small for our clients, ranging from culinary demos and seminars, to consumer and trade tastings, to festivals and street fairs. Some examples of events we have held include: Israeli Dairy Board cheese tastings and seminars, New York State Wine trade tastings, in-house restaurant demos at Zócalo, and the Bastille Day Liberty Festival, an all-day street festival open to the public.

Advertising, Concepting, Copywriting, and Placement

We develop creative content for advertising campaigns ranging from print, to internet media and radio. We will also recommend and custom-design media plans for your ads. Examples include print, radio and internet ads for Hass Mexicos from Mexico, and print and radio ads for Spiegelau Crystal, among others.

Video Production

Recent research has shown that 69% of internet users watch videos online. Web videos are one of the most effective ways of reaching consumers. At Ruskin International, we recognize that potential. When the Trade Commission of Spain came to us seeking to promote Olive Oil from Spain, they trusted our experience to provide them with optimal results. From assembling props to directing the camera crew to get that perfect shot to post-production editing, Ruskin International was involved in every step of production. We enlisted Spanish cuisine expert Chef Seamus Mullen (then of Boqueria) to create original recipes using olive oils from Spain. Together, we showcased the versatility of the product and accessibility of these recipes in a series of easy-to-follow cooking videos hosted on the Olive Oil from Spain website. Check out some of our videos on our Web Video page.

Retail Promotion

At Ruskin International, we work hand-in-hand with retail promotional partners to create events that get attention and draw large crowds, leading to increased foot traffic for the retailers while generating buzz for the client. For the Italian Trade Commission’s Vino 2011: Italian Wine Week, Ruskin International managed a campaign to promote Italian wine at twenty-five key wine retailers and five restaurants. We provided participating stores with digital assets and POS materials to promote the Vino 2011 campaign over a two-week period across all online and offline platforms. The success of the campaign led to print, online, walk-by, and in-store impressions totaling more than 800,000 during that period.

Case Studies