Marketing VP tells students to work for ‘what you believe in’
December 3, 2015 • Jonathan McVerry
With around 150 attendees, many of them advertising/public relations students, Lewis Goldstein’s presentation was multi-faceted. He shared his path to promoting a healthy lifestyle for a company he believes in and gave many examples (ads, videos, social media campaigns) on how he does it.
Goldstein, the vice president of branding at Organic Valley, was the Page Center’s fall 2015 Professional-in-Residence. He spent three days on the University Park campus visiting classes, meeting with faculty and presenting a lecture on the challenges of promoting organic food as a form of sustainable consumption and the ethics of labeling and packaging organics. His talk was on Dec. 1 in the HUB-Robeson Center's Alumni Hall.
As a leader for a national farmer-owned organic co-op, Goldstein opened his lecture with a few admissions about his eating habits.
“I eat what I want to eat. I eat crap sometimes," he said. “I am not perfect...and that's OK."
A Boston native, Goldstein described his journey from the marketing offices of major companies like Dr.Pepper-Snapple and the Boston Beer Company to the farm lands of Organic Valley, located in La Farge, Wisc., a town of no more than 700 people.
Before making the move to Wisconsin, Goldstein was working for an organic skin care company in upstate New York. Living on the east coast all of his life, moving to the mid-west did not seem probable—even after Organic Valley called about the position.
“To move from New York to Wisconsin, you will either think ‘This is the coolest place ever’ or ‘Run for the hills!’” he said to the crowd.
Owned and run by farmers from all over the country, Organic Valley is the largest organic dairy cooperative in the world. More than 1,800 farms participate in the co-op. Every employee gets his or her own garden. It has a mission to promote "regional farming diversity and economic stability." It was the kind of place Goldstien was looking for.
“Profit is not the most important thing,” he said. “Farmers come together for a mutual benefit (and) are treated fairly. It’s good for people to know where their food comes from, and trusting a company is important.”
Goldstein said that Organic Valley’s story is “authentic and honest,” and in its marketing, it tries to bring the farm to life. He tied this mission into his career advice for the students in the room.
“These are the things I believe in,” Goldstein said before taking questions from students. “Work for what you love. If you love to snowboard, go snowboard. You’ll spend all of this time doing it, so find something you believe in.”
Organic Valley products include milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and recently, protein shakes. Toward the end of his talk, Goldstein shared a few humorous viral videos promoting the company's new organic shakes. The videos offered ways for people to conduct faux-interventions with their muscle-bound, work-out-centric friends—also known as “bros.”
The “Save the Bros” campaign was a drastic change from the Organic Valley advertisements that showed off sunny farmlands, grazing cows and smiling farmers. Goldstein said those ads were not garnering much attention and were in dire need of a reboot. The new ads were fresh, youthful and catered to the social media age.
Goldstein was the sixth professional to visit campus as a Page Center professional-in-residence. The Center hosts a professional twice a year. The series is made possible by a generous donation from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The spring 2016 professional-in-residence is Jennifer Stapper, chief of communications for the United National Volunteers. Her keynote will be at 7 p.m. on Feb. 3 in the HUB Auditorium.