A new plan for weight loss

A shift in strategy may help companies such as Jenny Craig tap into a whole new customer base

Jenny Craig is best known for ads that follow celebrities Valerie Bertinelli and Kirstie Alley in their dramatic weight-loss journeys. Now, the company has recruited Queen Latifah, the heavy-set starlet, to advocate health and well-being, not just shedding pounds.

The company isn't backing off the Bertinelli ads that target people who want to return to the weight of their youth, but the Queen Latifah campaign aims for a different, potentially bigger, consumer base. The new ads suggest consumers can get healthier by losing 5 percent to 10 percent of their body weight.

"We are appealing to that segment of people who have more health-related and perhaps more moderate weight-loss goals, and we had never gone after them before," said Scott Parker, Jenny Craig's vice president of marketing.

After years of showing celebrities and heavy women shedding their excess weight over the course of several weeks, marketers of dieting aids and programs have finally begun to wrap their heads around a simple truth: Their version of skinny has become impossible for some. There's good reason for the maneuver. The weight-loss market has become fiercely competitive, and companies see a chance to expand their share of the overall business by focusing on getting healthy, not slimming down quickly, to attract larger numbers of potential customers.

Selling diet aids isn't easy. Advertisers often use "before" and "after" shots of women who drop dozens of pounds, and then feel comfortable enough to stroll around in a tiny bikini. In reality, dieting is hard work and relies on a consumer's willpower and yen for exercise, so marketers often can't deliver on their original enticements.

Joe Cadle, marketing director for weight control at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, said consumers "secretly hope for and pine for an easy, fast solution. That's what everyone wants desperately, even though they know it's not true and they know they can't get it."

Like other prominent diet marketers, Glaxo is trying something different. The company worked with the New York office of Boston's Arnold Worldwide to market alli, an over-the-counter diet aid that launched in the United States in June 2007. Ads for alli bear a no-nonsense message by promoting gradual weight loss of one to two pounds a week while encouraging customers to add regular physical activity and healthier eating habits. In other words, losing weight means changing behavior.

Unilever's Slim-Fast has shown a range of women in its TV ads, and its latest include women who are size 12 to 14 - even though the historical average in ads has been sizes 10 to 12, said Virginia Blake West, brand development director for Slim-Fast North America. After consumer research, she said, the company found traditional diet advertising, along with other images in fashion and entertainment, made "people feel doomed from the start. There are a lot of unrealistic promises and a feeling of '. . . Am I really going to be able to succeed?' "

The new push to be healthy and happy - no matter what your size - is showing up on TV shows as well. On Jan. 4, the Lifetime cable channel launched "How to Look Good Naked," in which former "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" star Carson Kressley helps women feel better about their appearance, not try to diet their way to a new one. One woman profiled in an early episode learns how wearing the right undergarments can make a big difference in outer appearance.

The feelings the show embraces are "in the zeitgeist right now," said Susanne Daniels, the cable network's president of entertainment. Lifetime also saw good viewer reaction to two movies it recently aired that put a spotlight on how overweight people are perceived. "To Be Fat Like Me" showed a young woman going undercover in a fat suit to find out how people would react to her, while "Queen Sized" featured the story of an overweight girl who was jokingly nominated for homecoming queen - and decided to make a serious run for the title.

Viewers are less interested in stories about "being perfect and being a size zero and being a model," said Daniels, and more intrigued by "embracing who you are, being healthy."

There's another reason why such messages are becoming more widely embraced - they made a big splash in the marketing world before. In 2004, Unilever's Dove launched a "campaign for real beauty" around the world for its skin-care and beauty products, with ads that used real women - in some cases voluptuous, in other cases elderly, and, in at least one case, bald. Ads asked consumers to decide if the women in question were "oversized" or "outstanding"; "bald" or "beautiful"; "gray" or "gorgeous." Debate over what constituted real beauty ensued.

The Dove promotion helped drive the problems with traditional beauty, fashion, and diet commercials into consumer consciousness, said Karen Grant, senior beauty industry analyst for market researcher NPD Group.

The ad agency that put the idea into action, WPP Group PLC's Ogilvy, estimates the Dove ads have received at least $21.4 million in free publicity from US media coverage. Many competitive beauty advertisers use messages that are "dictatorial - you should look like this," said Mike Hemingway, Ogilvy's global managing director for Dove.

Advertisers are realizing weight-conscious consumers are looking more for a friend than a huckster. When consumers want to rid themselves of excess weight, it's best if they are the ones defining their goals, not the ads, some advertising experts say.

"Some people feel they need to lose 50 pounds. That might be pretty daunting. It might be hard to take that first step because they know they are in for a long journey," suggested Kristen Simmons, chief marketing officer at Young & Rubicam Brands Southern California, a WPP agency that helped craft Jenny Craig's Queen Latifah campaign.

Jenny Craig is hoping Queen Latifah will help customers start their journey.

She isn't your typical weight-loss spokesperson, Parker acknowledged. A rapper who developed into a singer and popular actress ("Chicago," among other films), Latifah conveys a message of "self-empowerment and self-esteem," said Parker. Her website says her autobiographical book, "Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman," is "about being confident and sensual in a big, strong body."

Jenny Craig's aim is to not just "celebrate the 'after,' but we also celebrate the act of taking the first step, and we celebrate the process as well," said Parker. "That's reality. And I think that's going to give us a different kind of brand image in the mind of the consumer."

Brian Steinberg is the television editor of Advertising Age.