Big Reach Center of Hope Director Val Waselich (right) with the $20,000 representative check from Dan Pecchia and Kelli Hulea of Pecchia Communications.
Firm Launched After Job Loss Embarks on 3rd Decade in PR & Marketing
Pecchia Communications recently celebrated 20 years in business, marking a key milestone in a path that began with its founder’s unemployment and wound its way to unexpected success.
The Canfield-based company commemorated the occasion by donating $20,000 to the Big Reach Center of Hope, a food distribution center at Greenford Christian Church.
“This 20-year milestone brings great pride,” said Dan Pecchia, founder and president.
“It brings an even greater sense of gratitude for the many individuals who helped us get off the ground, sustained us through tough years and powered us to success beyond our dreams.”
Dan opened Pecchia Communications in November 2005 after losing his job unexpectedly.
The aim was modest.
“I just wanted to land a few projects to tide me over until I could find my next job,” he recalled.
But despite applying for more than 50 positions throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania, Dan landed only two interviews. Neither led to a job offer.
However, Pecchia Communications began to catch on. In mid-November 2005, The Vindicator ran a three-paragraph story on the top of its “Business Briefs” section with the headline, “PR Veteran Opens Pecchia Communications.”
“That little brief generated several phone calls that eventually turned into nice engagements,” Dan recalled. “It was one of the sparks that convinced me and my family that Pecchia Communications might be more than just a temporary project.”
Capitalizing on Local Roots
Before starting Pecchia Communications, Dan worked for two successful advertising/PR firms – Ira Thomas Associates (now Marcus Thomas) and Innis Maggiore Group. He was director of editorial services at Ira and a vice president at Innis, where he led its satellite office in Canfield.
But the key to getting Pecchia Communications off the ground was Dan’s previous 11 years of work in the news business. He had been business editor at The Vindicator before shifting to public relations in 1992, and in that role had established many local business contacts.
“Although in 2005 I had been out of the news business for 13 years, I had stayed in touch with enough people to know where some needs for my skills might be,” he recalled.
Dan managed to land work with several local companies, including Harrington Hoppe & Mitchell, Aim Transportation Solutions, Ricciuti Balog & Partners Architects, Ajax Magnethermic, Litco International, Bernard Daniels Lumber, Frederick Dodge and Pegasus Printing.
As the years passed and the staff grew beyond Dan, Pecchia Comm landed work with some of the Youngstown area’s leading organizations: Cafaro Company, Schwebel’s Baking, Home Savings & Loan, Turning Technologies, the Youngstown Foundation, the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber, the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, Second Harvest Food Bank, Trumbull Regional Medical Center, the Lordstown Energy Center and others.
“We wouldn’t have survived our first couple years if not for the individuals who gave us a chance to prove ourselves,” Pecchia recalled.
“Those pioneers included Paul Dutton, Shirley Christian, Gary Balog, the Fleming family, the Trebilcock family, Tom Illencik, Bob Frederick, John Moliterno and several advocates ‘behind the scenes.’ Some of those wound up being satisfied clients for many years.”
Now with a team of six, Pecchia Comm has served more than 90 companies over its 20 years (most of them are listed on our Clients page).
Catching on with a National Niche
Largely separate from its local business, Pecchia Comm stumbled into an obscure niche that has connected it to many large, national and international companies over the years.
This began in 2006 with what would turn out to be a two-year engagement with the Timken Company in Canton. The steel and bearings manufacturer needed a communications contractor for a large team that was installing a comprehensive information technology system across Timken’s worldwide operations. Thousands of employees would need to work differently, learn new software and part ways with career-long routines, and a lot of communication was needed.
Although Dan had never done this type of work, he worked closely with very supportive Timken colleagues to “figure it out,” a maneuver he learned and polished regularly during his newsroom years. He became the primary author, editor and coordinator for the communications campaign to advance this major organizational change at Timken.
Dan’s work there averaged 30 hours a week – rocket fuel volume for a startup.
Shortly after the Timken gig ended, he got a call from a similar team that was doing a large project at Whirlpool Corporation in Michigan. One of that team’s senior consultants had worked on the Timken project, remembered Dan and suggested him.
“The Whirlpool gig was even bigger and enabled me to learn a lot more about this emerging strain of communications work that supported these monster projects,” Dan recalled.
“In all my years with Ira and Innis, we had never heard of opportunities like this, let alone gotten the chance to compete for them. And here I was with this tiny new organization, and two of these behemoths had pretty much fallen into my lap.”
Timken and Whirlpool began a continuing series of these “change management communications” roles that have lasted from six months to two years, often with 40 weekly hours.
Other clients in this realm have included General Electric, American Greetings, Corning, Clorox, American Electric Power, Wendy’s, Wrangler and more.
“These projects free us from relying solely on business in the local market, where there are a lot of ups and downs,” Dan said. “But we’ve resisted going all-in on that type of work because we like working locally and we like variety.
“The different skills we’ve picked up in these two relatively separate areas of business have made us better at both.”
Read More About Our 20 Great Years
