Marketing Case Study: Weight Watchers Leads the Weight-Loss Race

By Fausto Mendez

We love to break down complex marketing campaigns to uncover the core motives of human behavior that fuel corporate success. This week, we’re analyzing Weight Watchers and the company’s classic marketing techniques. 

    Weight Watchers continues to dominate the weight-loss game with over $1.2 billion revenue each year and 8 million website visitors per month, and it’s closest competitors are about a third of its size. This constant success stems from a solid product that delivers results, but behind every great product is an even greater marketing campaign. Below, we break down the principles that made and continue to make the company’s marketing campaigns so damn successful. .

+ Sell the consequences. The average Weight Watchers customer isn’t interested in the product itself. Actually, the idea of self control is scary or boring, so why are people lining up for a membership? They want the consequences associated with that self control. They want the success, intimate relationships, fitness, appearance, money and whatever else results from losing weight, and they want to eat what they want while getting it. Weight Watchers sells the consequences, not the product.

+ Sell happiness. Weight Watches sells happiness, not a weight loss system. Similar to the previous point, the idea is to focus on the internal (emotional) results, not the actual product. 

+ Offer a test drive. Weight Watchers allows prospective customers to “join” the service for free. Furthermore, Weight Watches doesn’t force prospective customers to hand over a credit card number to do this. This style of free trials produces about a 30% conversion rate, which is not bad at all. 

+ Make it easy. The PointsPlus system makes it easy for customers to track calories without actually tracking calories. Sure, it’s based on basic nutritional science, but the target audience hates learning. PointsPlus is much easier in the short term. 

+ Exclusive products make it hard to leave the proprietary system. Weight Watchers sells (and sometimes gives away) PointsPlus calculators, snack foods, frozen meals, ice creams and other products that make it even easier to track calories. These products actually serve a brilliant marketing purpose because they: 1. boost brand awareness at key locations within supermarkets (where the target audience spends a lot time) and 2. make counting calories the traditional way even more tedious. 

+ Seek out new audiences. Your audience can get stale if you don’t actively court new targets. Weight Watchers recently started marketing to men, but they don’t expect men to show up at the meetings where 90% of the attendants are women. As a result, the company launched online tools and mobile apps that help men diet on their own - since men often prefer to diet alone. 

    As a marketing professional, it’s hard not to get jealous when a company’s marketing campaign is consistently successful, but that’s why we’re here to break it down. Happy hunting! And thanks to  Marketing Profs for the core data

    Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ or Linkedin, and stay ahead of the game with an occasional laugh and non-stop marketing & business advice, news and analysis. Brought to you by AnyPromo.com.

Caribou Coffee’s Brilliant and Fresh Marketing Campaign: Life is More than Coffee

By Fausto Mendez

Apparently, life is more than coffee. I was unaware of this, but this is the message of Caribou Coffee’s new marketing campaign. Well, I’m glad someone finally told me because I’ve been working inside this cubicle, sipping on lattes and green tea all day. The brilliant marketing campaign is a stark contrast from the classic message that coffee is all about focus and office productivity. 

    “Life is more than coffee. That’s why there’s coffee,” says Caribou Coffee via its new marketing campaign. The campaign launched in March with a series of innovative cups that aim to inspire and exercise your creativity with designs that you can draw on, color in or paint yourself.

     The coffee shop’s napkins also offer similar function with inspirational and time-wasting fun while you sip, sip, sip. 

    Of course, that part of the campaign is great at marketing to current customers, but what is Caribou doing outside of its shop to attract the attention of the rest of us? Images coupled with messages that promote a love of life beyond the office and coffee shop populate the company’s consumer-facing marketing materials, including billboards. 

    The message is quite the opposite of the message of the marketing campaign that popularized the term “coffee break”. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, the Pan American Coffee Bureau launched radio, magazine and newspaper campaigns that touted the benefits of coffee, mostly as it relates to work. Prior to this marketing campaign, employers didn’t allow for coffee breaks. The idea of a coffee break was absurd, but people didn’t associate coffee with productivity at the time.

    The absurdly successful slogan, which took many forms over the years, originally read: “Give yourself a coffee break, and get what coffee gives to you.” And the promotion worked. Employers learned about the benefits of coffee, and they made room for it during work hours. Cigarette companies tried a similar scheme, though it didn’t work as well. 

    Today, Caribou Coffee is taking a different approach, disassociating coffee with the drab office. Why should marketers limit the benefits to work? Now that everyone understands the benefits of coffee, the association to the boring office is actually a downer, not a positive message. After all, coffee can boost any moment, so take a cup with you wherever you go and smile. Marketers and advertisers, take notes.

    Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ or Linkedin and stay ahead of the game with an occasional laugh and non-stop marketing & business advice, news and analysis. Brought to you by AnyPromo.com.

The Death of Retail? Analysis of the Office Depot / OfficeMax Merger

By Fausto Mendez

Retail is an ever-changing landscape, but it will never be the same after the mass adoption of the Web. The office supplies industry is learning this the hard way as retail giants struggle to stay afloat in a world that is learning to prefer digital goods and services instead of the traditional stuff.

    We stumbled upon an excellent analysis of the upcoming Office Max and Office Depot merger, which is supposed to save both companies from economic doom. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a steep uphill battle as technology reduces the need for office supplies and e-commerce stores undercut the brick-and-mortar option with better prices and to-your-door delivery. In other words, get ready to pay even less for your office supplies as a revolutionary war is about to consume this industry.

    It’s a good read that inspires some important questions. Who will emerge as the online leader? Will Amazon step in to take over? Will a new, forward-thinking company emerge? Is there any room innovation? Who will remain the brick-and-mortar option? How far will prices drop? Only time will tell, but we suspect that established online giants, like Amazon, and web-based promotional products suppliers, such as AnyPromo.com, will play a big role in Office Depot/Max’s woes.

    We’ll continue to watch the story as it develops, so stay tuned. In the meantime, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+, and stay ahead of the game with an occasional hearty laugh and non-stop marketing & business advice, news and analysis.