Value Is Real – Product Is Fake

Maverick marketer Lynda Resnick has based her career on the belief that every marketing campaign begins with the same question: what is the product’s intrinsic value? Value, she says, is real – even when the product itself is 100 percent fake.

No story illustrates this better than that of her auction bid on Jackie Kennedy’s pearls. Resnick, who had bought and transformed The Franklin Mint into a collectibles powerhouse, was ecstatic when Sotheby’s announced an auction of the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Of all the items in the catalogue, Resnick was interested only in the legendary, ubiquitous necklace worn by the former First Lady, which had originally been purchased at Bergdorf Goodman for $35. They were estimated to sell at $200 to $300, but as the auction date neared, the estimate rose to $5,000. Then it shot to $25,000. Resnick told her dumbstruck husband that they might have to go as high as $100,000 on a bid. “They’re fake, right?” he asked.

Ultimately the winning bid – Resnick’s – was $211,000. The Mint analyzed the glass faux pearls to produce a matching necklace. With its 17 coats of lacquer, hand-knotted silken cord, and silver art-deco clasp with rhinestones, each Franklin Mint reproduction of the famous fake-pearl necklace was priced at $200. They sold 130,000 of them for a gross profit of $26 million.

Lynda Resnick is the author of Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business (Broadway Books, 2009).