Celebrities as diet spokespeople a double-edged sword

By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
New York Times

She calls it wishful shrinking. Last May, Carrie Fisher showed off her 30-pound weight loss, a result of 18 weeks on the Jenny Craig diet, to People magazine -- the most recent of the company's series of celebrity spokespeople to reach a major milestone in weight loss.

It's understandable that diet companies would want to incorporate celebrities in their marketing plans. Consumers believe they "know" famous people -- especially forthcoming ones like Valerie Bertinelli (Jenny Craig), Jennifer Hudson (Weight Watchers) and Marie Osmond (Nutrisystem) -- and can be inspired by them.

But employing celebrities can be a double-edged sword. When a company advertises a successful but anonymous dieter -- say, Melissa K. from Fairfield, Conn., who lost 50 pounds -- its target audience never learns how Melissa ultimately fared. Did she keep the weight off? Did she gain the 50 pounds back, as well as 50 more? Only she and her acquaintances will ever know.

Famous people, however, play out their weight struggles under glaring lights. It's hard to forget commercials of the actress and former Jenny Craig spokeswoman Kirstie Alley lustily drooling over the program's sanctioned fettuccine, or of her triumphant disrobing on "Oprah" to reveal her new bikini body in pantyhose.

It's equally hard to forget photos of Alley, after regaining the lost weight and then some, again on "Oprah": this time more conservatively dressed and contrite. Or, more recently,

falling with an audible thud during a lift on "Dancing With the Stars."

Last year, another diet program, the Fresh Diet, parted ways with its famous "spokesdieter," the pop singer Carnie Wilson, after she gained weight while under contract.

"It didn't work out with Carnie," said Zalmi Duchman, chief executive for the Fresh Diet, which delivers fresh meals daily across the nation. "She dropped like 20 pounds in the first three months. Then she, I mean, she had to go off of it. There's no question. She might have eaten the meals, but she ate the meals with a lot of other stuff. She started a cheesecake company."

Duchman said he didn't fire Wilson; he chose not to renew her contract. (Wilson and Alley declined to comment for this article.)

The specter of Alley's and Wilson's failure on these diet programs has done nothing to deter Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig from gathering a slew of other celebrities to represent them.

But Nutrisystem is being more cautious. The company's current spokespeople, Osmond and Dan Marino, the former Miami Dolphin, were not used as guinea pigs, said Stacie Mullen, its executive of celebrity marketing, but were approached after news reports that they used the program.

"We have gained our celebrity spokespeople through them being real clients first," Mullen said. "We learned about Marie as a client of ours through an entertainment magazine."

Jenny Craig is pursuing celebrity spokespeople more voraciously.

"We are interested in helping any celebrity lose weight," said Dana Fiser, the chief executive for Jenny Craig.

Indeed, the company employs six current and active celebrity spokespeople: Bertinelli, Fisher, actress Sara Rue, Jason Alexander, actress Nicole Sullivan and reality show personality Ross Mathews.

Not everyone agrees with this strategy. Cheryl Callan, chief marketing officer for Weight Watchers, said she suspected that what she called her competitors' "parade" of celebrities is a method of distraction.

"It may be about spreading risk," she said. In other words, if Bertinelli regains weight, members of the public won't notice because they're too captivated by Fisher's success.

Collecting celebrity spokespeople is not Weight Watchers' way. In its history, there have been only four celebrity spokeswomen for the company: Lynn Redgrave, Jenny McCarthy, Sarah Ferguson and, now, Hudson, who said she has lost 80 pounds on the plan.

Fiser of Jenny Craig responded that her company's use of multiple spokespeople is not a distraction but intended to disperse inspiration over a wider demographic.

"Our celebrities have appeal across the spectrum of dieters," she said, "from a 50-year-old woman, a 32-year-old woman getting married, a dad, a young mom, a woman who has had a lifetime of emotional impact."

And if that person who is supposed to represent the program fails? The executives from Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem and the Fresh Diet all insisted that backsliding by their celebrities doesn't bother them and even argued that it doesn't hurt their brand.

Perhaps, if there's any real risk here, it's for the celebrity. There are future roles to book. Isn't drawing attention to a weight problem worse than lying low while you secretly diet?

But Fisher laughed at the notion of keeping her weight to herself.

"What am I going to do?" she said in a phone interview. "Lie about my weight and say I am really thin?"

She added: "It's really important to recognize that it's just as hard for a celebrity as it would be for any other person losing weight."