You’re Fine As You Are!
The new ad campaign for Weight Watchers wants us to know that it's on our side. "Diets are mean," reads one slogan; "Go on a diet diet," urges another. Tylenol is now distributing free tips on preventing common aches and pains—only without the help of Tylenol or any other pill. Spokes-people for the companies say their campaigns are "honest" or intended "to educate."
It's an odd strategy: trying to win over consumers by suggesting that we don't need what they're selling. Have companies forgotten about the bottom line? No, they've just learned that shoppers are susceptible to flattery. If customers believe a company "has what's good for me in mind, that's a big, big plus," says C. B. Bhattacharya, a marketing professor at Boston University. The approach has worked for Dove, whose Campaign for Real Beauty, which debuted in 2004, urges women to love their bodies just as they are. It's helped Dove vault from a soapmaker into a $1 billion brand with new lines of lotions and self-tanners. Such ads also stand out in a market cluttered with unrealistic promises. The risk is that you'll decide you're doing fine, no purchase necessary. And no company wants to make that sale.
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Sarah Kliff covers the intersection of heath and politics for NEWSWEEK, reporting on a range of topics from assisted suicide to federal health care reform to reproductive rights and abortion politics. In the summer of 2009, she profiled embattled, late-term abortion doctor LeRoy Carhart and his plan to open a new clinic in the wake of George Tiller's murder. Sarah is a frequent contributor to the Gaggle, Newsweek's political blog, where she has covered health care reform and the ensuing battle over abortion language.
Sarah joined NEWSWEEK in the summer of 2007 as a health intern. She spent 2008 as the assistant to the national affairs editor, contributing reporting to eight cover stories and spending a week on the road with Vice President Joe Biden, and joined the health team in March 2009. She is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where she served as editor in chief of her campus newspaper, Student Life, and majored in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology.
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