Student Writer
Entrepreneur and author Lynda Resnick, nicknamed the "Pomegranate Princess" for her helmsmanship of POM Wonderful, joined Dean Ernest J. Wilson III at the April 9 Dean's Open Forum at USC Annenberg to discuss the marketing and branding of her many successful companies and to sign copies of her best-selling book Rubies in the Orchard.
Together with her husband Stewart, Resnick owns companies specializing in innovative product marketing such as POM Wonderful, Teleflora and FIJI water and writes a blog called "Ask Lynda" that encourages its readers to write in and ask questions about marketing creativity. Her marketing of Telefora's unique "Flowers in a Gift" earned her an Effie Award, but Resnick had more to say than just how she collected accomplishments.
"It's wonderful to be here - I really appreciate the invite," said Resnick to Wilson, who introduced her as a tireless activist in the public sector in addition to being an effective communicator and storyteller in her corporate marketing efforts. "I'm here to demystify marketing and to show how we build brands and how we solve all these problems, that I actually have some method to my madness. I've learned a lot on my 40 years in the business. I hope you find it a compelling road map for your future."
Communication professor Jeff Cole, who also directs USC Annenberg's Center for the Digital Future, told Resnick that it was "a treat" to have her at the school.
"I've known Lynda for many years and simply put, I don't know a smarter person in the business world," said Cole. "Her knowledge of television, her knowledge of print, rivals anyone I know at the television networks. Lynda has a social conscience that is unrivaled by anyone. It is absolutely staggering. And the book is a fascinating combination of autobiography and how-to. Every product she sells is really is a great product on its own."
Resnick compared genius to creativity and pointed to the latter as being paramount to marketing success. She also added that failure is a valuable tool for growth – sometimes even more valuable than success.
"Creativity touches all of our lives...there are few people who I think are geniuses," said Resnick. "One of the things I want to tell you about creativity is that creativity is not 'thinking outside the box' – it's thinking inside the box. You have to have a box. You have to look inside to get the answer...It doesn't matter if your creativity is in your floorboards or in your frontal lobe."
Building a brand, Resnick told the audience, is mostly about mastering three elements of marketing – recognizing value, which she called "the number one thing you need today when you build a brand;" a unique selling proposition, which helped launch last year's well-received Teleflora ad that ran during the Super Bowl; and transparency and commodity.
"There is always someone who is willing to make less money than you are," said Resnick. "Value has to be something people need, whether they realize it or not. Basic value doesn't show up like a friend on Facebook. You have to dig for it. It takes intellectual curiosity, a lifelong love for learning, and above all, patience. If any one of these virtues had not been present, we would not have had these successes today."
Resnick's successful in-house piloting of the POM brand and the greening efforts behind FIJI water – which came after months of what she described as a harassment campaign by the animal-rights group PETA – were both helped by transparency and communication in addition to a generous helping of honesty, she said.
With concerted efforts to rebuild rainforest decimated by logging and by bringing education and fresh water to remote villages near her company's plants, Resnick said the greening overshadowed a 28 percent sales profit in an industry that was actually down 15 percent. This success was helped by years of research in Israel, at Harvard, and at well-known scientific institutions which found that consumption of the antioxidant-rich pomegranate carried enormous health benefits.
"The bottom line is that this fruit has a story to tell," said Resnick, who added that many companies started during recessions – such as Coors Beer and Super 8 – and that she expected many new innovative companies to follow suit and to join POM in its branding success. "The History Channel could spawn a new series based on this."
Wilson, a vigorous proponent of innovation and its impact on social change, invited Resnick to a dialogue on Annenberg's constantly evolving direction.
"Here at the Annenberg School we have to re-imagine who we are and ask how do we educate the next generation," said Wilson, who added that Resnick might be able to provide some valuable input of her own in helping that vision in the future. "As soon as I can squeeze into our speaker's schedule, I would like to discuss how we can re-imagine the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism."
Wilson asked Resnick to describe her definition of the word "communication," especially in light of her emphasis on transparency in marketing. Resnick said that good communication results from an aggressive, tech savvy approach that stresses honesty - and a lack of fear.
"We are really everywhere – we're Twittering, we're messaging," said Resnick, who helped virally support Telefora's Super Bowl campaign via posts on YouTube and skins on the NBC Web site. "We get into the conversation. We've had some pretty horrible public relations nightmares...but this is what communication means today: you have to be honest. I was terrified (about POM's success) but I did not fear that it would not work. You learn so much more from your failures that you do from your successes. That's my best advice."
Resnick added that although she and her husband – a duo she compared to "salt and pepper shakers" – have demonstrated a golden touch in acquiring companies, looking over balance sheets and discovering what these companies may be be missing, the pair's corporate efforts have always been focused on reducing their carbon footprints, especially within the Central Valley environs that produce the bulk of POM's product. This, Resnick said, is a radical departure from the corporate America that has every company working for quarterly earnings and instant gratification.
"We will not go into business in any way that will harm," she said, adding that for her, "the worst things you could do" to be endorsing cruelty to animals and cutting down trees. "With FIJI water, it's good for the Fijians and it's good for the water. We work to give back. That's why we work. Being a good marketer is like being a good friend, if you listen and care, you will be successful...People care today. We learned a valuable lesson."
Communication professor Robert Scheer brought out a less-known detail in Resnick's cause-driven life – one that stemmed from her involvement in the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the then-top secret documents about the Vietnam War that galvanized the freedom of the press movement in the 1970s.
"You've been involved in causes from a very young age," said Scheer, who mentioned the scandal and how Resnick took a hard fall – albeit temporary – with the issue's architect, Daniel Ellsberg. "You did a really brave thing."
Resnick said that keeping an open mind and an innovative approach to progress is key to her successes.
"What I try to do is to go outside of my life," said Resnick. "As we age, our blinders close...I try to keep them open."
