When good PR goes bad
A light-bulb publicity moment backfires for Weight Watchers, writes Nicole Lawton.
The intention was innocent enough – promote a positive body image among women. But the delivery was not so subtle.
Weight Watchers dipped their toes in the ‘‘PG sex toy’’ industry this week, sending out lowwattage light bulbs to users – designed to give users a ‘‘boost in the bedroom’’.
But public relations expert Mike Hutcheson slammed the stunt as fattist, ill-judged and probably ‘‘written by a snot-ass skinny person’’.
The stunt was the weight-loss company’s answer to a 2016 Body Confidence Report which showed that fewer than a third of New Zealand women considered their body to be sexually appealing.
As part of the campaign the company sent light bulbs to journalists, promoting the mood light as a ‘‘PG sex toy’’.
‘‘We hope it helps you start seeing yourself in a new light,’’ said an accompanying note.
But the stunt, dreamed up by Australian public relations outfit Magnum & Co for the Weight Watchers Black campaign, flopped spectacularly when the recipients accused the company of ‘‘fat shaming’’ women. It dumped the campaign on Thursday.
The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Hutcheson, who has been in the advertising and marketing business for 40 years, said Weight Watchers made a mistake.
‘‘You don’t get someone to you by fat-shaming them.
‘‘It’s obviously fattist, and it will go down in the pantheon of bad PR ideas, in the realm of the America’s Cup ‘Black Heart’ campaign in the early 2000s or the like 2011 ‘abstain from sex’ campaign, and trying to change the New Zealand flag.’’
Weight Watchers has apologised for any offence caused, saying they acknowledge the delivery of the campaign did not make their original message clear.
But despite the stunt’s flaws, Hutcheson still puts stock into the old saying ‘‘any publicity is good publicity’’, saying it probably wouldn’t have done the multinational any long-term harm.
‘‘In a perverse way – it probably will act in their favour, and they probably will achieve more attention for the negative response than they would have, had it been a positive campaign.
‘‘I don’t think they’ll get anyone saying ‘I’ll never use Weight Watchers again’ because of it . . . but they could have done it better to begin with.’’
Auckland PR company Mango Communications agrees with Hutcheson.
General manager Sean Brown said Weight Watchers had an interesting insight to use as the basis for starting a conversation about body confidence.
‘‘Unfortunately, their approach played to the negative and made an implied assumption about the recipient, rather than focusing on positive body empowerment.
‘‘Any campaign, especially potentially controversial ones, needs to be tested with the target audience – perhaps they were just too close to the campaign and couldn’t see how it would actually make women feel.’’