Celeb Dieters: What Happens When the Pounds Creep Back?

Copyright 2010 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
This blog post was transferred from another service.

I posted (pontificated) in an Advertising Age discussion (yes, again). If you have a subscription you can still get it from the Ad Age web site. The current URL is http://adage.com/article?article_id=142076

Celeb Dieters: What Happens When the Pounds Creep Back?
By Emily Bryson York

As FTC Steps Up Scrutiny, Subway, Others Face Extra Marketing Challenges When Famous Faces Regain Weight

Crisis management in the dieting industry usually stems from one of two tactics: fight or flight.

When a celebrity endorser visibly puts on weight, the marketer must decide whether to distance itself from the problem or to be part of the solution, and that's not going to get any easier.
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Ryan Cormier added a good insight.
I think that the key underlying message in all this goes beyond marketing. It is, in my opinion, a simple issue of health and personal dieting habits. The main reason that all of these diets worked in the first place is because they were coupled with exercise and meticulous meal planning. Once those endorsement checks start rolling in and these celebrity endorsers are ushered around the country on promotional tours, keeping up with sound exercise and eating habits can be quite a challenge.

I'll expand on it below.
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Since Ad Age only allows 500 words, my post on that site is shorter than what I posted here. (Being a blogger gives me so much power!)

What Ryan Cormier wrote is common among people who travel a lot. Weight loss marketers, who hire endorsers, should know this already & be ready for it.

Be An Authority & Beat Big Competitors
To beat big competitors, you need to be & be perceived as an authority in a subject related to what you offer. People expect an authority to help them avoid & solve problems. Even after you do, some may stop doing what you advised them to keep doing. Let them know if they stop doing what you told them to do, their previous progress won't mean doo-doo.

When any investment &/or reputation is at stake, it's vital to be ready to deal with any problems. It's best to avoid common problems. Have a plan to avoid problems & deal with problems that weren't expected.

You may wonder: OK, Dennis, how do we plan to deal with unexpected problems? After all, they ARE NOT expected! Just calm down, please & I'll explain.

According to Murphy's Law (What Murphy gets a law, but I don't?!), whatever can go wrong will go wrong. A corollary states, it'll happen at the worst possible times.

Since multiple problems will happen at the worst possible times (those times being when other problems are distracting us), you should have preliminary guidelines. A few guidelines should be:
Determine who will determine what the guidelines are. Will you get advice from a lawyer, public relations consultant or will you use what you read in a marketing consultant's blog? (Well, it IS an option.)
Who will be in charge of triage (decide which problems to address 1st)?
Who will decide which resources to use & how much of those to use to solve a problem?
If media people or the public are apt to ask questions, who is allowed to deal with their questions?
If you have an endorser, will you use a disclaimer like: Opinions of (the endorser's name) are not necessarily the opinions of (your business's name) or its owners. We may have the same opinions, but we don't have the guts to publicly admit it. (You may want to eliminate that 2nd sentence!)
Is an endorser an official spokes person or just somebody who will pose for pictures?
Who will decide what the endorser says?
Who will decide what the endorser wears? (Will it be a bikini or a 1-piece? No, not you Frank!)

Before I started to read the whole Ad Age article, I figured this issue is a great opportunity. When I saw this next quote, I thought it's close to the opportunity I've found.
"(A partner with Venable in Washington, Claudia) Lewis-Eng said marketers may only employ models who use the product REGULARLY and that's going to be difficult to monitor."

This Is The Opportunity I've Found In This Issue
A successful dietary & exercise program should be life long. Since these are health issues, they affect how long a life lasts. How much profit will/do the firms (cited in the article) get from people who keep using the products?

The firms featured Before & After pictures. Now they can show additional powerful results (at least, if those are accurate). Their basic message can be: Keep using the program to maintain what you invested your time, energy & money to obtain.

Now, to make the new basic message more powerful, they should add: Before starting this program (celebrity name) was *** pounds overweight. After being in the program for (length of time), s/he weight was down to ^^^ pounds. We emphasize the importance of continuing with the program to maintain your ideal weight.

Unfortunately, (celebrity name) discontinued the program & you can see what happened.

Maintaining your healthy weight requires a commitment to healthy living - - including eating the right amounts of the right foods. The right foods are in this program. Even if you eat the right foods, also eating junk food will reduce your results & increase your weight.

Good To Great & Back Again
It's the same kind of message Jim Collins has in his business books. People should stop doing what makes things worse. They should keep doing what works well. Some firms he featured stopped doing what made them successful, so they failed.

Though people criticized him for using failed firms as great examples, Collins didn't hide when it happened. He kept urging people to use the timeless principles he described.

Collins uses a dieting analogy that fits what happened after those celebs stopped doing what brought them optimal health. It doesn't negate the efficacy of the program.

Deviation from the program reinforces the importance of the program. An endorser who stops using the program can still be a powerful endorser when s/he advocates continuous participation. Participation equals continuously buying & using the program food.

Marketers can make the point more powerfully by comparing people (celebs or regular folks), who started the program about the same time as the celebs & have kept their weight at a healthy level.

It could be somewhat like a research project with a control group & test group. The "control" group controlled their weight. The "test" group flunked the test, but they can "retake" the test & pass.

Famous people have survived scandals worse than what happened to the celebs who regained weight.

It would also reinforce how important it is to start over when anybody regains weight. It's quite common, so the weight loss firms should appeal to those who seem to have fallen off the wagon.
It's not too late to regain their good health. They had the self-confidence, pleasure & recognition of being slim & they should get that kind of self-confident pleasure & recognition again.

The theme should be Never Give Up Because You Can Still Win & We're Here To Help (for a fee, of course).

If What Can Go Wrong Does Go Wrong
Consult with a lawyer before using this defense: When a government bureaucrat complains about the difference between your marketing claims & actual results of using what you offer, you can answer- Federal or state legislators made the laws you're trying to enforce. Those legislators also promised to balance the budget, but what did they REALLY do, huh? So, why aren't you hassling them?

Seriously, if a competitor (for example- Walmart) offers a shoddy product/service & if the superiority of your product/service is legitimate & indisputable, you can use comparative advertising if it's legal in your area.

You shouldn't use anything that may compromise your current marketing. If your messages suddenly become aggressive, you may alienate your clientele.

Even if you exploit the occasion, it may just seem like a scheme to gain market share, but consider what consumers need. They need a good quality solution. If they don't know about your legitimate & indisputable solution, they'll still have their problems. If what they were buying is false or incomplete, they want/need a real solution & they'd need/want a trustworthy supplier.

If you & what you offer is what they need/want, you should send them your messages. You can help those consumers & they can help you when they buy from you.

Since all of you (who read what I write, but don't post questions) have such a variety of products & services, it's hard to suggest the kind of messages each of you could use.

Consult with a lawyer before using a headline like this - Dieters: What Happens When the Pounds Creep Back & You're The Creep It Happens To?

NO, I'm just kidding! Don't use that in a serious marketing message.

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2010 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/

Subject: What Can Go Wrong In Sponsored Links

I want you to know I do research to confirm important facts before I post any messages. Below, you can find an example of my dedication to research.

During my research for the previous post "Celeb Dieters: What Happens When the Pounds Creep Back?" I found a sponsored link. I don't know the details of every advertising service that puts sponsored links in web sites. Some services charge a sponsor a fee every time that sponsor's link is put on a web page. Some services let sponsors limit the number of times their links are placed, so the sponsors' budgets aren't used up too quickly. If sponsors run out of marketing money they're in deep doo-doo.

When multiple sponsors want to use the same term, the highest bidder gets placement before the others. When the highest bidder's budgeted amount is gone, the second highest bidder gets that placement.

Apparently, some sponsors aren't picky about specific terms, so their URLs come up for odd terms. Or maybe they bid on odd terms on purpose.

I advise you to be far more careful & don't do what these vendors of doo-doo did.

When I was writing the previous post, Microsoft Word didn't accept doodoo or doo doo, but it accepted doo-doo. It's a technical term meaning - - Well, you can find the definitions below.

This is an example of a sponsored link I found on this web site page -http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Doodoo when I did my research.
Sponsored links
Doodoo
Find Doodoo and other Hard to Find Products.
www.smarter.com

Later that sponsored link was gone, probably because the sponsor only budgeted for a limited number of clicks or exposures.

Below, you can find why I contend doo-doo is NOT hard to find.

This is from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/doo+doo?r=75&src=ref&ch=dic

Slang Dictionary
doo-doo

1. n.
dung; fecal material. : There's dog doo-doo on your shoe.
2. in.
to defecate. : Mommy, the cat's doo-dooing in the kitchen!

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.

Considering the "facts", it's on your shoe & the cat's doo-dooing in the kitchen, I contend doo-doo is very easy to find.

I advocate factual marketing messages. It seems any marketer, who would advertise with this message "Find Doodoo and other Hard to Find Products" is trying to mislead us, so we'll think doodoo is hard to find.

(As you read these next statements, please hear them in your mind as being spoken by a self-important windbag.) Ladies & gentlemen of the jury, I urge you to find the defendant guilty of trying to inflate the price of doodoo. The purpose of this practice is only to line the marketer's pockets with more of our hard earned money. We can't afford to let anybody raise their doodoo prices so high, that it would deny some people access to a necessary part of life.

Some of us may want to live without doo-doo, but doo-doo does happen, doesn't it? Trying to live without doo-doo is a no-no. It's a fool's errand.
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I'm not just picking on smarter.com. When Micorsoft Word insisted wind bag is wrong & windbag is right, I took the case to a higher authority - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wind+bag

While I perused that site & that specific web page, I found more atrocities. The following advertisements are/were labeled as "Sponsored Results".
Wind Bag
Shop Wind Bag. Great deals on Wind Bag!
www.eBayMotors.com
Bag Wind
Order By 12/21 For XMas Delivery. Free Shipping $50 on 100,000 Items!
www.Target.com

Note- I found these "Sponsored Results" on February 21, 2010. Apparently though, you can still order Bag Wind By 12/21 For XMas Delivery & get Free Shipping $50. Is shipping free or do they charge $50? Maybe they ship $50 for free, if so, I hope they'll ship it to me!

What Dave Barry says & writes many times, applies to me & what I wrote- "I'm not making this up."
Or as some express it, "I don't make this stuff up, I just report the facts."

Can you imagine what Target's other "100,000 Items" are?!

Please Note- It's not my intention to help these sponsors sell wind bag, bag wind or doodoo. Please, don't use this post as an excuse to post advertising for anything other than what would logically & ethically be used in a signature (sig) file. An example of a sig file is what I wrote under my name below.

Can you imagine what government bureaucrats will do when they discover somebody is trying to sell hard-to-find doo-doo?

Here's another entry - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sniff+test
Main Entry: sniff test
Part of Speech: n
Definition: a basic questioning of the feasibility or sense of pursuing a new idea or venture
Example: Her idea about going back to school may not pass the sniff test.

Can you imagine a government investigator or regulator checking on the selling of doo-doo?
Would s/he do a sniff test?
Would it pass a sniff test?

Unfortunately, I didn't find a Sponsored Link/Result for somebody offering sniff tests.
But on http://www.reference.com/browse/sniff+test I did find this -
Smell Tests
The Original UPSIT Smell Test Use code G0409 for 10% off!
Sponsored Results
www.SenSonics.com

Now, does anybody want to sell or buy a sniff test?

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2010 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/