Weight Watchers ups Oprah’s role

Weight Watchers plummeted after a severely disappointing full-year forecast, so it’s turning again to the name that fueled its last rally: Oprah.

The wellness company rebranding itself as WW tumbled more than 34 percent Wednesday after warning that member recruitment will decline in 2019. It’s targeting profit between $1.25 and $1.50 a share this year, a far cry from the $3.36 analysts had been estimating. Revenue will be about $1.4 billion, below the nearly $1.7 billion projected.

Weight Watchers acknowledged that its marketing campaign during the key winter diet season failed to resonate, and it said it plans to lean more heavily on Oprah Winfrey in its upcoming ads. Winfrey, who owns more than 8 percent of the wellness company, joined in October 2015 as an adviser and board member, and her star power helped fuel an impressive run-up in market cap from about $400 million before Winfrey disclosed her stake to a high of more than $6.8 billion last summer.

Winfrey has stayed involved in the company, and she did the voiceover on a recent campaign. But she hasn’t been as front and center in marketing materials as she once was. The company is going to change that: Chief Executive Officer Mindy Grossman noted that the celebrity will “play a central role” in an upcoming marketing campaign. Winfrey’s chief of staff recently joined Weight Watchers as chief business development officer, too.