Marie Osmond Weight Watchers
Marie Osmond Weight Watchers
Skin Deep
When Dieting Becomes a Role to Play
SHE calls it wishful shrinking. Last May, Carrie Fisher showed off her 30-pound weight loss, a result of 18 weeks on the Jenny Craig diet, to People magazine — the most recent of the company's series of celebrity spokespeople to reach a major milestone in weight loss.
It's understandable that diet companies would want to incorporate celebrities in their marketing plans. Consumers believe they "know" famous people — especially forthcoming ones like Valerie Bertinelli (Jenny Craig), Jennifer Hudson (Weight Watchers) and Marie Osmond (Nutrisystem) — and can be inspired by them.
But employing celebrities can be a double-edged sword. When a company advertises a successful but anonymous dieter — say, Melissa K. from Fairfield, Conn., who lost 50 pounds* (*results not typical) — its target audience never learns how Melissa ultimately fared. Did she keep the weight off? Did she gain the 50 pounds back, as well as 50 more? Only she and her acquaintances will ever know.
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Famous people, however, play out their weight struggles under glaring lights. It's hard to forget commercials of the actress and former Jenny Craig spokeswoman Kirstie Alley lustily drooling over the program's sanctioned fettuccine, or of her triumphant disrobing on "Oprah" to reveal her new bikini body in pantyhose.
It's equally hard to forget photos of Ms. Alley, after regaining the lost weight and then some, again on "Oprah": this time more conservatively dressed and contrite. Or, more recently, falling with an audible thud during a lift on "Dancing With the Stars."
Last year, another diet program, the Fresh Diet, parted ways with its famous "spokesdieter," the pop singer Carnie Wilson, after she gained weight while under contract.
"It didn't work out with Carnie," said Zalmi Duchman, chief executive for the Fresh Diet, which delivers fresh meals daily across the nation. "She dropped like 20 pounds in the first three months. Then she, I mean, she had to go off of it. There's no question. She might have eaten the meals, but she ate the meals with a lot of other stuff. She started a cheesecake company."
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Mr. Duchman said he didn't fire Ms. Wilson; he chose not to renew her contract. (Ms. Wilson and Ms. Alley declined to comment for this article.)
The specter of Ms. Alley's and Ms. Wilson's failure on these diet programs has done nothing to deter Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig from gathering a slew of other celebrities to represent them.
But Nutrisystem is being more cautious. The company's current spokespeople, Ms. Osmond and Dan Marino, the former Miami Dolphin, were not used as guinea pigs, said Stacie Mullen, its executive of celebrity marketing, but were approached after news reports that they used the program.
. "We have gained our celebrity spokespeople through them being real clients first," Ms. Mullen said. "We learned about Marie as a client of ours through an entertainment magazine."
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Jenny Craig is pursuing celebrity spokespeople more voraciously. "We are interested in helping any celebrity lose weight," said Dana Fiser, the chief executive for Jenny Craig. Indeed, the company employs six current and active celebrity spokespeople: Ms. Bertinelli, Ms. Fisher, the actress Sara Rue, Jason Alexander, the actress Nicole Sullivan and the reality show personality Ross Mathews.
Not everyone agrees with this strategy. Cheryl Callan, chief marketing officer for Weight Watchers, said she suspected that what she called her competitors' "parade" of celebrities is a method of distraction.
"It may be about spreading risk," she said. In other words, if Ms. Bertinelli regains weight, members of the public won't notice because they're too captivated by Ms. Fisher's success.
Collecting celebrity spokespeople is not Weight Watchers' way. In its history, there have been only four celebrity spokeswomen for the company: Lynn Redgrave, Jenny McCarthy, Sarah Ferguson and, now, Ms. Hudson, who said she has lost 80 pounds on the plan.
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They have been approached by other well-known clients, Ms. Callan said, "but we have passed on a number of people who were shopping themselves around. That's not the sort of person we want to work with. When we first started talking to Jennifer, we needed to believe that she would really be willing to embrace the program and change the way she ate forever. I am quite confident that we won't need to part ways with Jennifer."
Ms. Fiser of Jenny Craig responded that her company's use of multiple spokespeople is not a distraction but intended to disperse inspiration over a wider demographic.
"Our celebrities have appeal across the spectrum of dieters," she said, "from a 50-year-old woman, a 32-year-old woman getting married, a dad, a young mom, a woman who has had a lifetime of emotional impact."
And if that person who is supposed to represent the program fails? The executives from Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem and the Fresh Diet all insisted that backsliding by their celebrities doesn't bother them, and even argued that it doesn't hurt their brand.
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"If they don't do good on it, it doesn't mean the product doesn't work," Mr. Duchman said. "It just means that they're not sticking to it."
"The dieting public understands that the dieter has a responsibility to comply with the program," said Ms. Mullen, adding that if the dieter fails, "I don't think the public blames the program the dieter was on. We help the dieter take the first step to lose the weight."
Still, long-term success is obviously prized by diet companies as well as by dieters.
"I don't think weight gain by a celebrity that was previously with us somewhere along the way is a great thing," said Ms. Fiser of Jenny Craig. "But, as an organization, we have to work with the part we can control. We believe confidently in the program that we are willing to take the risk. But it is a risk."
Perhaps, if there's any real risk here, it's for the celebrity. There are future roles to book. Isn't drawing attention to a weight problem worse than lying low while you secretly diet?
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But Ms. Fisher laughed at the notion of keeping her weight to herself. "What am I going to do?" she said in a phone interview. "Lie about my weight and say I am really thin?"
She added: "It's really important to recognize that it's just as hard for a celebrity as it would be for any other person losing weight."
And Ms. Rue, who said she has lost just over 50 pounds on Jenny Craig, said that she would be dieting in public with or without a contract with a diet company.
"Obviously, being a spokesperson for a company definitely puts a light on you, but I feel like that's one of the reasons I wanted to do it so publicly," she said on the phone. "It was going to be public anyway. I sort of felt like the tabloids were going to write stories about it and people were going to comment about it one way or the other so I might as well take the power back and be like: 'Yes, here it is all out in the open. There's nothing to write a story about.' "
And if you know any celebrities who might want to lose weight, send them to Mr. Duchman. He has paid a couple of celebrities to tweet on the Fresh Diet's behalf, but he hasn't found an official spokesperson since Ms. Wilson didn't work out.
"The experience hasn't turned us off," he said. "But we would definitely do more due diligence when picking the celebrity this time."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/fashion/celebrities-as-diet-spokespersons-a-two-edged-sword.html
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