Wendy Kaufman starred in the beverage commercials from the early 1990s through 2008
Credit: YouTube
NEED TO KNOW
- Wendy Kaufman was known as “The Snapple Lady” from the early 1990s through 2008
- Kaufman had no intention of living life in the public eye until her decision to answer every piece of fan mail sent to Snapple launched her to fame
- Kaufman tells PEOPLE about a teen fan mail experience that shaped her approach to everything she did at Snapple
Wendy Kaufman knew what it meant to be a fan.
Kaufman, known to many as "The Snapple Lady," channeled her own experiences in fandom when stepping into her role as the head of PR and eventual face of the brand.
At first, answering fan mail was a way to help keep Kaufman on a positive path after committing herself to sobriety.
"I realized that a huge part of my sobriety was getting out of my brain and doing nice things for other people, because I wasn't so nice and I wasn't so nice to me," she tells PEOPLE.
"And I went to Arnie [Arnold Greenberg] and said, 'We're missing a whole part of the business. We're making a terrible mistake and I want to rectify all the wrongs of this company.' And he said, 'Do what you want to do.' "
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Credit: People Magazine
Kaufman took the mantle as the head of PR, paving the way to become known as "The Snapple Lady."
"When Kurt Cobain killed himself, I was stunned at the number of letters that I received from kids who were devastated about him taking his own life. I was really shocked how many came to me and felt that they wanted to. And I did go to a therapist and I wrote the most beautiful letters to those people, so that they knew that I was paying attention, that we were there for them. And if they needed to call or to get help for their grief, because they were a grieved people."
She recalls a letter from a 12-year-old girl in which she opened up about a suicide in her family.
"It was Take Your Kids to Work Day, and her parents couldn't take her to work because they were totally in grief. And she asked me if I would take her to work," she recalled.
"Well, it's 35 years later, and she became my biggest fan. She went to work at Tiger Beat Magazine to answer the letters, because she was so upset that they didn't answer me that she became their letter writer for the time that she was there. To this day, I know her family. I'm entrenched in her family. She's like one of my kids. And I am in touch with a lot of people that I knew back in the Snapple days. And I just want everybody to know, it's been an honor for me to get to know some of these people because they have made my life better."
"I started handling the letters and realized, 'Oh my God, not only is this a gift to sobriety to do great things for people, but it's making me feel so much better about myself. This is God's work. This is unbelievable, that this just showed itself to me,' and I went from there."
Kaufman noted that many of the letters were from people seeking a more meaningful connection with the brand they loved.
"I noticed where we were residing at that time, which was in Valley Stream, there were people, it was more of a middle-class neighborhood and people were fans of Snapple in Queens. That was the roots of our company," she said of the company's New York area fans.
"They wanted to know if we would be involved in a kid's birthday party. They wanted to know whether, just because we knew they were huge fans, they could get a coupon. So we had coupons made and we started to make premium items. We started to go to the people's birthday parties, and we started to get involved and sponsor sports teams," she continued.
Credit: Brad Swonetz
"That was all under the auspices of what I was doing, because we were building a business and everybody was so busy doing what they were doing, with the mail and opening up new accounts. I have to say this about Snapple back then, is that Arnie, Lenny [Leonard Marsh], and Hymie [Hyman Golden], who were the founders, believed in really big marketing. They knew that they wanted to bring the brand national."
When the company changed hands and was ready to go public, they picked an ad agency to work with. It was in this process that the value of what Kaufman was doing was fully recognized.
"A man named Jude Hammerle became my boss. He would sit quietly in the corner, and I think he was just a little mesmerized by me. He knew my story. It was never really a secret in my environment, but it was quiet out there because we were made from the best stuff on earth, but I wasn't made from the best on earth personally," she said.
"He became mesmerized by how I would be on the phone with people. I was very irreverent because of the Howard Stern and the Rush Limbaugh beginnings that we had. So if somebody called and said, 'I'm not buying Snapple because it doesn't fit in the car, beverage holder in my car,' I would say, 'So buy a new car. What do you want me to do about it?' And he just loved my style and he just loved my fun with speaking to people."
When it was time to meet with the new ad agency, Hammerle mentioned Kaufman.
"He said, 'There's your campaign,' with all my letters and stuff. We were getting a thousand letters at that point, which was unusual because we weren't even doing a campaign at that time. So that's sort of how it happened."
While it was a lot to manage, Kaufman kept in mind her own experience sending fan mail as a teen.
"When I was a child, I loved The Brady Bunch. And Greg Brady, Marcia Brady's older brother, I had such a crush on him. And I wrote one fan letter in my life, which was to him, to win a date with him through Tiger Beat Magazine. And nobody even acknowledged this heartfelt letter that I wrote to Tiger Beat," she recalled.
Credit: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
"So anyhow, that always stayed in my head. I just remembered people are not writing because they feel like they're going to get anything. We should at least be kind enough to give them an answer. And that's really how it stayed with me that I was always going to be nice and answer them, even if it was a ridiculous question. I was going to answer them on behalf of the company and that the company would be their friend and always there for them."
And Kaufman ultimately did get to have her Greg Brady moment, when she appeared on The Stephanie Miller Show and got to meet Barry Williams.
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"When I went on Stephanie Miller, all of a sudden they brought out Greg Brady, and he's dressed in a suit with two or three dozen roses, and I'm ready to just drop dead. I don't even have anything to say at that point… I almost had a heart attack looking at him, being on stage with him," she laughed.
"But he couldn't have been nicer! And that was something…. There were so many gifts that I had. There were so many funny things that happened."
Her personal connection to her work there is what made it so hard when Snapple eventually went in a different direction. Kaufman and Snapple parted ways in 2008.
"I remember going to a therapist at the time, because I knew that I was losing something that was just out of my hands, and I was always going to be known as the Snapple Lady, but without a brand because they had no interest in having any kind of relationship with me," she said.
"But everybody else thought that I was her. And even to this day, I still get a Snapple letter. Out in the world, people know that I was the Snapple Lady. So when they went to plastic? Please, I didn't hear the end of that. I'm still hearing about that."
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