042: Weight Watchers’ Branding Woes & Wins

Welcome to Will It Stick? podcast, where hosts Melissa and Alexis cover creative advertising campaigns, PR stunts, and marketing activations that brands of all shapes and sizes pull, and dive into the research and data to understand if it worked.

Approximately 45 million Americans spend $33 million per year on something that has a 95% failure rate.

What do you think it is?

Dieting. It’s a HUGE industry with little success.

For a big portion of the population, that fresh beginning that comes with a brand new year includes a goal to get healthier, possibly lose weight and pick up fitness or a healthy eating routine. In fact, a recent international study carried out across 30 countries found that 45% of people globally say they are currently trying to lose weight. In specific countries, that number goes up even higher…for example in Chile, ⅔ of the people (60%) are trying to lose weight and more than 50% are dieting in Spain, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and right here in the good out the US of A.

And as we know, there are no shortage of options when it comes to dieting. From meal plans like Slim-Fast and Nutrisystem, to high fat, gluten free, no carb options like Keto and Paleo, to apps like Noom & MyFitnessPal…the diet and weight loss category has grown to be a $71 billion dollar industry.

There is one global weight loss company that is kind of the OG – one that has experienced all kinds of ups and downs in its long history, from amazingness of The Oprah Effect to hashtags gone horribly wrong – do you know which company that is Lex?

Weight Watchers, now known as WW after a 2018 rebrand. Weight Watchers was founded in the US in 1963 by a Queens, New York homemaker, Jean Nidetch. Jean has a pretty badass story as she turned herself from a self-proclaimed overweight housewife into a global entrepreneur and diet company mogul.

We dive into their marketing campaigns to uncover some of the smart and some of the terrible choices that Weight Watchers or WW has made throughout the years to attract and retain millions of people to its diet community.