Brand Strategy for Diet Business is Missing Huge Opportunities

I had a conversation with someone this morning that made me painfully aware of a breach in the strategic hull of the “Diet” business. They mentioned to me they had just quit smoking and wanted to shed a few pounds they’d picked up in the process. I mentioned a book that outlines a process I have had success with written by Ian K. Smith, the nutritionist responsible for the food programs the competitors in the show “Celebrity Fit Club” follow (or fail following).

But her understanding of what she needed to do was to go on some sort of “military diet” thing where she could lose 11 pounds in 3 days of suffering and then be done with it. I decided not to press the subject or tell her the human body is only capable of losing 3 pounds of fat a week, really no matter what you do, since I’d be crashing her dream of a quick fix. This is a commonly known fact among nutritionists and trainers but not among the average person.

The problem is that even the best sources of information are branded like the ones that peddle false hopes of and easy fix to a complex problem. Ironically, the ones that sell are telling people a version of the story they want to hear and therefore illicit a behavior, they buy it, but upon certain failure many give up and never come close to their goals. But no one is checking statistics to measure the success rates of those readers before they buy, they instead buy based on the $15.00 hope that the manufactured fantasy of rapid effortless weight loss that the book promises is true. It isn’t!

So what’s wrong with this picture and where’s an opportunity to redesign the strategy?

1. The publishers marketing these books are all crowding together under the same umbrella afraid to get wet. They’ve decided there’s one way to market a diet book that will work. Design it like an airport bookstore business title and make sure there’s a picture of the celebrity (or soon to be celebrity) author on the cover. Budget for author photo shoot? $500.

2. With a huge health and organic food craze going on right now, how come nobody is designing a weight loss system based on wholistic, sustainable food choices? This could be huge if positioned properly. Farm partnerships and tours?

3. The real change that most people need to make to succeed at weight loss is by eating more fruits and vegetables, especially raw. Why not piggy back on the raw craze and create a designer diet?

4. The reality behind the successful training programs is that they retrain your mind and body to crave foods that are good for you. This is a paradigm shift for anyone used to eating take out and restaurant food. By changing the position from promises of “rapid weight loss” to helping people get re-acquainted with the vegetarian in them there’s a huge amount of different opportunities for sustainable and culinarily interesting “diets”.

This occurred to me while doing the “Fat Smash Diet”. Really the gist of it is you drop all the wheat and fried foods and empty dry carbs, even meat for the first couple weeks in place of fruits and vegetables. At first it was hard, but once underway I realized it was less about weight loss and more about retraining my brain to crave and be satisfied by foods that make my body happy. This is what they’re all afraid to say! But why?

My question is, why is this not an attractive story to tell markets? Dropping meat and expensive packaged foods for sustainable fruits and veggies, grown locally and organically, this is the real secret behind the best diets, and ironically it’s huge now in the media. So when are these two going to marry?

Rough Outline For A Brand Discovery Discussion

I often send myself some notes through email to my phone to prepare for a first discussion with a client or potential client, and I thought I’d share this list I just sent myself today for a meeting. These are intended to give me a sense of both what makes any brand tick but also to what degree my client understands their own brand.

Please feel free to steal these and use for your own discussions. These are conversation starters so rephrase and reword these to fit your own discussion style.

Who are you? (Personality)
What do you do? (Cocktail conversation quicky)
What’s your vision? (define “wild” success)
What’s your mission? (how dare you getting to “wild success”)
What wave are you surfing? (social context?)
Who shares your brandscape? (competitive audit)
What makes you the “only”? (Positioning strategy?)
What should you subtract/Add? (Curate, curate)
Who loves you? (Tribe?)
Who’s your enemy? (Who is it fun to rally against?)
What do your customers call you? (In their words not yours)
How do you explain yourself? (What’s your value without “marketing speak” and acronyms)
How do you spread the word? (marketing strategy/execution?)
How do people engage with you? (integrated platform?)
What do/should they experience? (How do you want them to feel?)
How do you earn loyalty? (Building your tribe how?)
How do you extend success? (Where are you moving/how changing?)
How do you protect yourself? (Hoew do you defend your position? Innovate how?)

* Some of the wording here comes from Marty Neumeier’s outstanding books “Zag” and “The Brand Gap”. Get them read them.