USA: Ocean Spray Chooses Welch’s Marketing Head as President & Chief Operating Officer

Randy C. Papadellis, the marketing chief behind the dramatic growth of the Welch's brand in the 1990s, has been tapped by Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., as President & Chief Operating Officer, reporting to new CEO Rob Hawthorne. Papadellis, 42, Senior Vice President of Marketing of Concord, Mass.-based Welch Foods Inc., has overseen a doubling of Welch's market share and a surge in sales revenue from $425 million to nearly $700 million since 1994. Papadellis led the team that introduced the most successful advertising campaign in Welch's history. The national campaign, featuring children as spokespeople, has earned Welch's and Papadellis several advertising awards. Equally as impressive to Ocean Spray, a cooperative owned by cranberry and grapefruit growers, Papadellis has helped deliver a 50 percent increase in earnings to the grape growers who own Welch's, the processing and marketing arm of the National Grape Cooperative Association. "With that kind of track record in the marketplace -- and that kind of financial performance for growers -- Randy Papadellis simply is the perfect match for Ocean Spray," said CEO Hawthorne, the former Pillsbury executive hired in January to engineer a turnaround of the cooperative. As President and COO, Papadellis will report directly to Hawthorne and oversee all day-to-day operations of the $1.36 billion company, the number-one brand of canned and bottled juice drinks in the U.S. He starts at Ocean Spray July 10. Before joining Welch's in 1994, Papadellis already was a respected veteran of the food and beverage industry. He began his career with Frito Lay in 1981, and moved on to become Vice President of Marketing for Cadbury Beverages North America. Papadellis holds an MBA in marketing and finance from Cornell University and a bachelor's in business and government from Colby College.