Howdy, Marketer! 

If I told you to sell a fruit that is impossible to peel, stains everything it touches, and has a gritty mouthfeel, you’d probably tell me to shut up.

That was the reality of the humble pomegranate in the early 2000s. 

But Lynda and Stewert Resnick found the benefits of the fruit and created a new category by selling antioxidant-rich pomegranate juices.

POM Wonderful turned a messy, difficult agricultural product into a sleek, high-margin symbol of longevity. 

It was a calculated, billion-dollar exercise in category creation, vertical integration, and smart marketing.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What is POM Wonderful 

• Target Demographics and Positioning

• Marketing Strategies of POM Wonderful

  • Website

  • Product Design 

• Distribution

  • Self-funded research

• Campaigns That Shaped the Brand

• Wrap Up

What is POM Wonderful 

Some Stats: 

Instagram: 30K followers

Facebook: 343K followers

YouTube: 4.17K subscribers

POM Wonderful produces and markets pomegranate juice and pomegranate-based products, positioning the fruit as a superfood packed with antioxidants. 

To stand out from other fruit juices, they've built their empire around a distinctive hourglass-shaped.

Target Demographics and Positioning

From early on, POM went after the health-conscious consumer with money to spend. 

Their core demographic inclines towards females, 25-55, college-educated, with an aim to maintain physical and cognitive function as they age. These are the early adopters who buy into wellness trends before they hit mainstream.

POM leaned hard into the antioxidant angle when that was becoming a buzzword in wellness circles. They caught the wave right when Americans were starting to care deeply about what they put in their bodies and were willing to pay premium prices for functional beverages.

The brand positioning was luxury from day one. That bottle design, the premium pricing, the deep purple color that indicated richness and health. 

Marketing Strategies of POM Wonderful

In POM’s initial research, they found that only 12% of Americans knew about pomegranate as a fruit. 

The first 2 years of the company were focused on sales, after which they started their marketing and PR efforts. 

They had to educate consumers while selling to them. POM put effort in content marketing before content marketing was really a thing. 

Website

Their website has a subsection titled ‘Health & Science,’ which became an education hub about pomegranates, health, and antioxidants. 

Another page titled ‘Recipes & Drinks’ which shares various recipes and serving suggestions. 

Their ‘Tree to Table’ page transparently explains the process of how the juice is produced to retain its natural properties. 

They also have a fantastically curated page on the history of pomegranates with audio and visuals mapping the fruit’s history across ages.

Through their website, they positioned themselves as the authority on everything pomegranate.

Product Design 

If you strip the label off a Coke bottle, you know it's a Coke. The same applies to POM. 

The product design itself is marketing. POM’s bottle is probably one of the most distinctive package designs in the beverage industry. It looks like two pomegranates stacked on top of each other. The clear glass shows off that deep red color that signals antioxidants and health.

Distribution

POM’s parent institution, The Wonderful Company, has developed an extensive network for its brands. 

They use retailers, distributors, and direct story delivery for an efficient supply chain.

They practice vertical integration by growing their own pomegranates in California, which ensures a fresh and controlled produce. They have also advertised this since initial days: 

Self-funded research

They also invested heavily in research studies, even funding their own. They found pomegranate as a “way to give back to society”, investing $25 million+ in research. 

Campaigns That Shaped the Brand

Cheat Death 

The "Cheat Death" campaign was simple, bold, and provocative. It showed the juice bottle with a noose. 

The message is that antioxidants have power to extend lifespan. 

However, the ad received complaints of being misleading in claims (oops!), leading to its ban in the UK. It also got them into trouble with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) where the government argued they were making unproven medical claims. 

Honestly, worth the risk, though.

Crazy Healthy Series

It was a series of ads featuring dragon, samurai, archers, and cyclops.

(embed) https://youtu.be/DK9NJlSRZJE?si=c45AjymI01NDTpNo 

Humor and fantasy dramatize POM’s antioxidant story by showing consumers being “protected” by mythical warriors after drinking POM juice, translating the abstract idea of free-radical defense into vivid, memorable visuals.

Meta Marketing (but not that kind)

POM sponsored The Greatest Movie Ever Sold to turn advertising itself into entertainment. 

The brand basically marketed itself…by creating a film around marketing - and that’s what I call Meta Marketing. 

Premiering at Sundance delivered outsized earned media, long-tail PR, and academic relevance at a fraction of TV ad costs. As a brand already known for bold, science-led positioning, the stunt reinforced POM’s brand personality while maximizing memorability over short-term sales.

Wrap Up

What POM did was create a category, and that's the hardest thing to do in marketing. They proved people would pay premium prices for functional beverages if you gave them a reason to believe.

The brand's challenges now are about evolution. 

The product is still distinctive. The brand equity is real. And the opportunity is enormous. 

The pomegranate category they created is bigger than ever. They just need to reclaim their position as the definitive brand, not just another option on the shelf.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems [LinkedIn]