Weight Watchers admits ‘mistakes’ after sending female journalists night light to improve sex lives
Weight Watchers has admitted it made a mistake with a PR stunt in which it sent female journalists “mood light bulbs” to support a campaign claiming Australian women do not want to have sex with the lights on because of poor body image.
The packaging for the globe included an explanation: “This globe is a ‘mood light’ designed to give you a little boost in the bedroom (a PG sex toy, if you will).”
Weight Watchers’ senior marketing manager, Rebecca Melville, admitted the light bulb might not have made sense without the context of the campaign, leading some people to feel offended.
“As we launched, we launched in stages and that has fuelled the conversation without context,” Melville told Mumbrella.
The full campaign is set to launch tomorrow.
Weight Watchers sent out the globes to promote a new program, Weight Watchers Black, which is aimed at getting customers to see themselves in “a new light”.
The campaign was created by BMF and is being supported with research that suggests 61% of women felt their sex lives were affected by body image issues.
The campaign and promotional material on the Weight Watchers website is heavily weighted toward promoting how losing weight will improve a person’s sex life with tips on how sex will be enhanced by diet, exercise, ways to feel good naked and eight reasons to have more sex.
The campaign focuses on sex, which is a first for the brand, and is supported with a film expressing the impact that body image has on women’s sex lives.
Not even an energy efficient light bulb…. smh
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Looks like an LED bulb…
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I really don’t get what all the fuss is about. I’m female, so not offended by this. People just like to get their knickers in a twist these days over every little thing.
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I am proud of my lightbulb-shaped body
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Let’s not panic, it’s only the guardian.
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People talking about sex? That’s out of control. I’ll have nun of it.
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That’s what Rebecca Brookes said.
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women participate in coitus. how do you think we all got here. except for Jesus.
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Dear Women getting their knickers in a twist about this please go away and shut up. You KNOW for most of you this is exactly why you don’t have sex with the lights on – you just don’t like being called out on it. I have heard so many women say this in my 50+ years of life – *scared* that their partners will see their fat bodies. But no, all people do these days is whine about their feelings being hurt. Harden up ffs.
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Puts a new light on the situation
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So many people these days are poised in anticipation of the arrival of the next excuse to be offended. weight watching is largely about body image, we are all ( excluding the asexual ) sexual beings, we are all conscious of our physical appearance, and perhaps never more so than when we are sharing intimately. This largely fraudulent “look at me, I’m morally clean” huh ha, is just another case of unraveling the big wool ball of social tolerance and sexual openness we have managed to gather over the past 100 years. For the most part these days, I keep my sex light in the window in the form of a candle, Please come back home, all is forgiven.
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I think the campaign idea has legs and is a new twist on just another weight loss conversation…the bulb however, not so great. I think Weight Watchers wishes they could turn off the lights and star again with this one.
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Let me take a wild guess – male creatives?
How to turn women off Weight Watchers for life.
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obviously this is sending a message to target the ones who think they are not worthy, that they are only good enough if they look better as a person, to be able to have sex with the light on. Don’t you get it dummy? try to be less selfish for a second.
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Great insights and data. Check. A relevant and contemporary space to play in. Check. An important message to share. Check.
PR should be a cinche… Wrong.
Setting the idea up with the data was actually all played out the way media would like to receive the bones to craft a story… BUT very poor in execution. A mood light bulb (soft light?) that appears to make you look less fat (?) is not the answer… Maybe It should have represented your lightbulb moment; the point at which you start accepting yourself and being comfortable in your own skin… Again, positioned gently, without assumption the reciever is a either ashamed of themselves or (God forbid!) heavier… So this is too personal to be delivered in the first person. And the weight loss should always be positioned as only part or ONE of the solutions. Products must ALWAYS appear modest themselves with media!
Perfume, a range of lingerie (with a decent size bandwidth) or even bedroom furniture could have played much more easily in this ‘switch on confidence’ space… And the story could have been nicely finished with some survey data from the partners of women (which would invariably point to lights on for all bodies).
But this is probably a space that brand like Weight Watchers, which survives on women’s loathing of their bodies (many of which suffer disordered eating), was never going to survive the scrutiny of free-thinking media.
Maybe the ATL campaigns will strike a cord and motivate women to sign up and it will actually work for WW. But this is an ATL idea that couldn’t stack up in the highly discretionary arena of earned, I’m afraid. Pays to be cautious when you’re not paying.
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Nicely thought out and beautifully explained comment. If there were a “like” button here I would gladly press it.
(Perhaps I already have?)
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As Richard says, nicely put. Consider this a ‘like’ too.
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