Pears Get A Hefty Shout-Out From Rapper
January 28, 2015 
The tale of rapper Rick Ross and The Pear is an unusual story of how social media can connect us all together in interesting ways. The pear world and the rap music world have collided thanks to a quote, “Shout out to all the pear,” from Ross. This quote, and the way social media quickly picked it up and spread the message, has put the pome fruit on the mainstream media’s radar.
“Every once in a while something special happens and you accidentally get connected with something great. It’s a good thing for people to connect with their food, and especially this new demographic,” says Kathy Stephenson, marketing communications director for Pear Bureau Northwest.
Ross gave the pears a nod in an interview in May 2014 with DJ Tim Westwood in London. Ross attributed part of his significant weight loss to a steady diet of pears. His quote went viral, appearing on Vine entries, Tweets, fans asking Ross to sign pears, and whole host of images where Ross’s face is superimposed on pears, in orchards, etc., etc. Ross’s pear even has its own Twitter parody account @RickRossPear. Just do a Google search for “Rick Ross Pear” and you’ll see what we mean.
The slimmed-down rapper has appeared on Good Morning America to talk about his 85-pound weight loss thanks to pears. He was also featured in Bon Appetite magazine, talking about — you guessed it – his love of pears. What accompanies this media blitz is a list of recipes for consumers on how to include pears.
Stephenson said that Pear Bureau Northwest is enjoying the attention from a new audience, and although the new follows and likes this has garnered aren’t necessarily the same as a Twitter party or some of the other forms of social media outreach the organization does, Ross’ pear shout out has generated 300-400 new followers that likely wouldn’t have sought out pears in the first place.
“What we have chosen to do is to tie his discussion about pears being part of his weight maintenance or weight loss. We are choosing to tie the pear back to that,” she says. “Daily we have people shouting out to the pear and we’re communicating with them. We’re doing our best to keep that dialogue going and reminding them that [pears] are a part of smart choices.”
Stephenson said the bureau has made several attempts to send boxes of the fruit to Ross, to keep the pear love going. But those attempts have gone, alas — fruitless.
“The best part of the publicity that we got by participating in conversation with [the media] is there are 1,600 growers. We got that in the stories. There are 1,600 growers who brought those pears. For me that’s probably the biggest accomplishment,” Stephenson says.
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