Weight Watchers magazine spearheads global brand repositioning

Sarah Homewood
By Sarah Homewood | 17 July 2015
 

Weight Watchers is rolling out a new look magazine, with the weight-loss brand using the title as a vehicle to reposition the brand globally.

Produced by Bauer Media custom publishing arm, the title and the brand are still focusing on weight-loss, however, they are now looking at the lucrative health and wellness space, and choosing to focus its content on wellness.

Paul Schiffner, managing director for Weight Watchers, told AdNews that consumers will see a dramatic change in how the brand portrays itself through the revamped title.

“We've decided to make an evolution with our magazine. We're going to talk to our customers about weight loss but we're going to be doing it much more in the context of holistic health,” Schiffner said.

“For us the magazine is the first step, the vehicle to talk to our consumers about how things are going to change at Weight Watchers. In Australia and New Zealand they'll start to see other elements from product in program, and how we deliver meetings and our digital user experience. All of these things are going to evolve as we move forward,” he added.

Schiffner explained that while the brand has spoken as authentically as he would have liked in the past, this repositioning is all about fixing that.

“We haven't done a great job in the past, presenting the brand in an authentic, modern, fresh way - we've always spoken those words - but now we're going to do it in a more overt way.

“For the customer it will be a dramatic change, but for us it feels more evolutionary in many ways,” he said.

The new-look Weight Watchers magazine launches on 13 August and Schiffner said there will be other changes coming later in the year, in terms of advertising and channels the brand uses in order to truly reflect its new positioning.

“You'll see some things that support [the launch] in terms of the media that we use, in terms of platforms it will be much more innovative.”

“It will make the consumer sit up and say something is changing at Weight Watchers.”

The global weight-loss brand works with creative agency BMF and media agency OMD in this market.

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