Weight Watchers, which took its business away from Wieden+Kennedy in March after ditching the celebrity spokesperson model for a “reality” approach, has awarded its creative account to Havas Worldwide.
Here’s the quote from the client’s SVP of marketing, Maurice Herrerra:
“We have engaged Havas Worldwide in the U.S. to develop work for a winter 2016 advertising campaign aimed at driving member recruitment and bringing to life our new program innovation. We chose Havas based on their deep strategic insight and an ability to develop a broad range of creative work in a highly collaborative manner.”
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The company did not specify whether Havas will officially be its creative AOR, but several sources tell us that the New York office will play lead on the account moving forward. (The agency itself had no comment.)
Weight Watchers, which has recently struggled to regain relevance, sent its business to W+K in 2014 after more than seven years with McCann. There was no formal review at that time, which may have been because the company’s then-new American president Lesya Lysyj developed a relationship with W+K while she was U.S. CMO at Heineken.
In this case, the review lasted nearly eight months. Havas’s final rival was The Martin Agency, which has been very aggressively seeking new business and is currently involved in the McCann family’s attempts to retain American Airlines.
You probably recall that Wieden’s “If You’re Happy” and Super Bowl spot “All You Can Eat” were very different than (and, frankly, superior to) the client’s past campaigns. Before moving away from McCann, Weight Watchers decided to abandon its old marketing model, which relied heavily on endorsements from B-list celebrities like Jessica Simpson. This one was far darker in comparing dietary challenges to drug addiction, but the company apparently wasn’t having it–and its relationship with W+K ended after less than a year just as Lysyj got pushed out.
After breaking up with Wieden, WW signed New York’s DiMassimo Goldstein for a spring campaign but noted that its search for a new creative lead would continue.
That review stemmed, at least in part, from a desire to cut costs. (WW spent $65 million on measured media in the first half of 2015, which marks a decline from recent years.)
In short, Weight Watchers is no longer as relevant as it once was because consumers are increasingly going with “do-it-yourself diet plans.” The Wieden work was an attempt by the brand to reassert itself, but it ended up getting the company’s president fired.
This win, combined with Havas’ victory in the Kmart review, does go a long way toward explaining the recent string of hires and promotions in New York.