Oprah's magic touch can make or break your business

It was about four years ago that I took a midday stroll to hip-hop mogul Jay Z's 40/40 club in Manhattan for a press conference. There it was announced that a then-relatively unknown beauty and skin-care line, Carol's Daughter, was teaming up with a few bigshots, including Jada Pinkett Smith and husband Will.

Among the samples distributed to attendees, I discovered the Brooklyn-based company's Jamaican Punch body scrub, an aromatic and moisturizing sea salt scrub that pleases the senses. According to the product label, it contains a blend of oils, Brazilian orange, Fiji apple, exotic ylang-ylang, spicy canella bark, nutmeg and tropical sugar cane. Can't you just smell it already?

But those Carol's Daughter products once had a promotion far more valuable than a Manhattan press conference: an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. On Thursday night, CNBC aired a special, The Oprah Effect, illustrating just how influential the media mogul can be on product sales.