Weight Watchers Canada abandons TV & creates first digital-only campaign
In a new campaign in Canada, Weight Watchers and digital creative agency Pound & Grain came together to create the “Just Watch Me ____” campaign. But for this campaign, the brand decided to use only digital assets to engage with the audience.
Weight Watchers Canada creates first digital-only campaign
The agency honed in on specific digital media assets such as digital banners, targeted videos ads on social media channels, YouTube pre-roll ads and native advertising through digital publications.
"Since working with Weight Watchers, we have seen digital performance grow from strength to strength at driving engagement and membership sign ups,” said Penny Norman, planning director at Pound & Grain. “With the data giving the team more and more confidence in digital, Weight Watchers were keen to explore a digital only campaign.”
Norman also noted that digital was much easier to track versus a traditional TV spend.
“By going all digital, the brand is able to track the effectiveness of each individual piece and adjust the media strategy according to what is producing the best results,” she said.
As far as the creative concept, the brand and the agency wanted to create a meeting environment without actually taking cameras into a meeting. Instead, they used the roundtable conversation and dinner as a way to show off the conversations and dishes that Weight Watchers members can eat on a daily basis.
“There’s something special that happens in meetings as people share their stories and come together in support of each other’s individual journeys,” said Scott Lew, associate creative director, Pound & Grain. “This idea spawned from the magic that happens when a group of members get together who aren’t afraid to share their stories in hopes of inspiring others.
For the brand, and this digital-only campaign, advertising to a wider age demographic was also something that Weight Watchers and Pound & Grain took into account.
“Weight Watchers has a huge range of members but the brand is often associated with an older demographic,” Lew said. “It has been important to ensure the brand offers an amazing program for all ages, especially a younger demographic, so our campaign looked to feature this group and show their journeys.”
This isn’t the first time that Weight Watchers has created spots under the “Just Watch Me” campaign. In 2016, with FCB Montreal, it created a campaign around the brand’s Beyond the Scale program, which was the biggest change in 50 years. In the US, that campaign featured Oprah talking about her weight loss journey. Since then, the campaign has been followed with a blank after the “Just Watch Me” title so that viewers can fill-in-the-blank.