Packer Fresh Take: Karen Nardozza of Moxxy Marketing

Karen Nardozza, president and CEO of Moxxy Marketing, shares her best advice, her most memorable project and what we should add to our menus.
Karen Nardozza, president and CEO of Moxxy Marketing, shares her best advice, her most memorable project and what we should add to our menus.
(Karen Nardozza)

Welcome to The Packer’s Fresh Take, a column featuring advice and inspiration from leaders and innovators in the produce industry, in their own words.

Karen Nardozza, president and CEO of Moxxy Marketing, shares her best advice, her most memorable project and what we should add to our menus.

Tell us about your roots.

I’ve always considered Monterey County, California home, even though I grew up as an Army kid whose family moved a lot. We were fortunate that my dad was stationed twice at Ft. Ord, California (in Monterey)—once when I was very young (1-4 years old), and a second time when I started high school. Both very influential times in one’s life, and my first and best childhood memories are from Monterey and Salinas, where I grew up surrounded by lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, and the leafy greens Monterey County and the Salinas Valley are so well known for.

In 2001, after living in Atlanta and New York for 10 years and working at various advertising agencies with clients in the food and restaurant sectors (Buckhead Beef, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Great American Cookie Company, McCormick & Schmick’s, Canyon Café, Hops Grill & Bar, etc.), I was “homesick” and ready to return to California. I reached out to marketing agencies in Salinas and Monterey to see if I could finagle a way back to Monterey County, and was lucky to find an agency in Salinas called Full Steam Marketing & Design. That agency helped launch Fresh Express—their flagship client for 20 years—and I was hired to be the account supervisor on the Fresh Express account.  

A year after joining Full Steam, I bought the agency with another employee and owned it until 2007 when I left to start Moxxy. Our clients were Fresh Express/Chiquita, TransFresh, Newstar Fresh, River Ranch, Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, California Strawberry Commission, and many other fresh produce companies. It was an exhilarating change of pace for me to be working in fresh, healthy foods, often with the same people I went to high school with—all of us grown up and working in the agriculture industry!

Hit us with your best advice.

Hope is not a valid strategy. To be successful in any marketing endeavor, intentional, strategic planning combined with action that differentiates a brand or product from the norm will deliver results. The key takeaways here are strategy and taking action. But to be successful, brands and companies need to perform their due diligence with research and strategic planning, then don’t over-analyze. Be bold, take calculated risks, and go, go, go. Then adjust as new information becomes available and keep going. But doing the same kinds of marketing the rest of the industry is doing, or doing nothing and hoping for a different, better result, is not likely to deliver anything noteworthy. If you’re satisfied competing on price and being at the whim of the market, then I suppose none of this matters. But for those who want to elevate their products and brands, doing something—and specifically something that might seem risky, expensive, or scary—is what’s going to work.

What should the industry take advantage of?

I’m approaching this question from a marketing and communications perspective (of course!). I’m a huge proponent of focusing on making sure to know and remember to employ basic, tried and true marketing methods—back to basics, if you will. Not just in fresh produce, but in all industries, we get excited or feel pressured to follow and trial the latest trends. Because many companies in the fresh industry are smaller farming families, often with no marketing department or expertise, understanding basic marketing principles and practices is critical, and much more important than deciding whether your company should be on Instagram or shoot a new drone video. However, I think there’s something about the perishable nature of fresh produce, combined with the inherent lack of control in most farming operations (Mother Nature will always dish out whatever surprises she wishes!) that seems to make most of us in the fresh produce industry operate at warp speed and in reaction-mode almost all the time.

The tradeshow deadline sneaks up on us, the crop of a new vegetable is being harvested in a week and no one remembered or had time to have packaging designed and printed, we’re dealing with trucking problems, inspection issues, food safety protocols, etc. and marketing just isn’t on the radar. The opportunity exists for many fresh produce companies to begin investing in a marketing program by focusing on the basics, including strategic planning, especially during generational and leadership shifts, and trying not to put marketing last while dealing with all the other important priorities that won’t wait. And for those who do, approaching their marketing and messaging from the perspective of, “What does the target audience need to hear and see and know to change their perceptions and behaviors?” is a much more valid question from where to begin than, “What do we want to say about ourselves?”

What is your favorite thing about work travel?

I will never forget my first PMA Fresh Summit in New Orleans in 2002. It was overwhelming and exciting and fabulous! But every time I get to travel to visit one of our clients’ farms, packing houses or facilities, it’s an amazing trip and a great day. There’s nothing I love more than spending the day with a client in their citrus groves, berry fields, peach orchards, salad plant, or production line. I’m ready to travel at a moment’s notice, and always enthusiastic to go!

What project are you most proud of?

There are two:

Development and introduction of Braga Fresh and their Josie’s Organics brand wins that designation in a big way from a marketing career perspective. In 2009, Rod Braga hired me to help refresh a couple of his family’s farming companies. After designing a logo and website for ASA Organics, and doing the same for Braga Ranch, Rod wanted to work on creating his family’s own retail label, named after his grandmother, Josie. It was just going to be a small brand, where they set aside a tiny portion of production to sell in their own boxes. He needed help creating the sales organization that would sell it too. This sounds comical recounting it now, because I think we all knew instinctively from the start what powerful potential the Josie’s Organics brand could have once we started designing it. I’m not sure what my team and I did to earn Rod’s trust, but he gave us a remarkable amount of freedom—and authority—in creating both the Braga Fresh and Josie’s brands.

From the Josie’s logo to the signature blue polka-dot packaging, to the recipes and website, sales materials and videos, my team and I lived and breathed the Braga brands (affectionately called the Bragaverse at Moxxy), and felt tremendous responsibility and pride in both developing the Josie’s brand and supporting the Braga Fresh sales team. The Bragas treated us like part of their family, and when we launched the Braga Fresh and Josie’s Organics brands at PMA Fresh Summit in 2013, you would have thought we gave birth to Josie herself! All of us were beaming like proud parents, and that deep sense of accomplishment and joy has lasted to this day.

A second project that stands out is creating the Salinas Valley Half Marathon in 2007. While the race has since been retired, it started with my idea to create a destination race with a course that took runners through the Salinas Valley, giving them an education about the crops and agriculture industry that are the engine of the region, while providing a fun, challenging race with gorgeous views of this famous farming area. It was my vision to help give Salinas a more positive image and bring a healthy event for the community to rally around that drew runners from all over the country.  It took several years to plan, but with a lot of dedication from a tenacious group of volunteers (many who work in fresh produce), plus sponsorship help from fresh produce companies (including a generous multi-year presenting sponsorship from Bruce Taylor and Taylor Farms) in August of 2010, we put on the first Salinas Valley Half Marathon with a 13.1 mile USATF-registered course that took runners from the Soledad Mission, up River Road past Merrill Farms, Braga Farms, and a dozen other farms, as well as winegrape vineyards from Smith Family Wines, to Hahn/Smith & Hook, Wrath, Manzoni, and others.

Runners crossed the finish line at Pessagno Winery among the vines, then celebrated their achievement with a fabulous finish festival party at the winery with etched bottles of wine as trophies for each age group. The first year brought 1,000 runners from 40 states and five foreign countries. Over the next five years, the race grew in size and popularity, becoming a favorite on the destination race circuit. All this was happening at the same time my team at Moxxy and I were developing and launching the Braga Fresh and Josie’s Organics brands, and of course we were handling all the brand development and marketing for the Salinas Valley Half Marathon as well, so it was an absolutely insane time in my life and for Moxxy, but incredibly rewarding.

Nardozza
Nardozza with Josie.

What keeps you cool as a cucumber?

I love to cook! I’m always searching recipes for inspiration, and usually pull ideas from a few before making up my own version. The whole process—from chopping to mixing to seasoning to the actual cooking—is meditative and allows me to engage in a creative, productive activity that (usually) results in delicious meals to share with friends and family.  So much of what I do at Moxxy requires a lot of thinking and problem solving, and way too much time behind the keyboard. So, cooking helps me clear my mind and use my other senses to unwind and refresh. I’m of Italian heritage, so pasta, risotto, gnocchi, and homemade sauces are a fave to make. But I also love to churn unique ice cream flavors, like basil, roasted cherry goat cheese, lavender honey, chocolate Guinness, and orange Szechwan pepper.

What’s on the menu?

There’s no way I could pick just one favorite, but mangoes and cherries are my favorite fruits to eat fresh in season. I love Brussels sprouts, and usually toss them in olive oil, roast them with pancetta, and finish them off with a light sprinkle of Parmesan and black pepper. I also make a pretty fabulous bruschetta using Campari tomatoes with lightly sauteed garlic. But I also love sweet baby broccoli, and we developed an amazing recipe for Josie’s Organics with Chadwick Boyd that I make whenever I can: Roasted Sweet Baby Broccoli and Lemon with Parmesan Pecan Gremolata

What new skill should we try?

Over the pandemic I focused on staying healthy—both mentally and physically—and trying to keep my mind engaged on something besides work. For me, because I’m in marketing, that means less media! I was keeping the TV off and staying off social media as much as possible (except Tik Tok…that’s become an addiction!). But after years of starting and stopping Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish and Italian, I abandoned that and began using the app Babel, which gamifies language learning and has helped me stick with it. I’m having a great time learning, but my smartphone is now confused about what language I want to communicate in and autocorrects all my texts in Spanish!  

I also discovered True You Cards™, which are a deck of 30 daily mindful insights in a beautifully designed card deck. They were created by one of my former graphic designers, Gabe Gandzjuk. I love them so much I bought a dozen decks and have been giving them as gifts.

What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?

About 10 years ago, Lenny Kravitz opened for U2. I saw them in Anaheim, and it was the most over-the-top combination of amazing music and stage show imaginable. I’ve seen them both play in various venues a couple times, and they never disappoint. But I also loved Susan Tedeschi at the Mountain Winery amphitheater in Santa Cruz. Her powerful, bluesy singing voice blows me away, and is such a dramatic contrast to her speaking voice, which is high-pitched, soft and quiet. The contrast is unbelievable.

 

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