#weighthis

Background

In 1981 (Jane Fonda, dieting and leg warmers were popular), Lean Cuisine was a category breakthrough. Fast-forward 30+ years – the brand faced declining sales and “diet” had become a four-letter word. Lean Cuisine desperately needed to shift away from its diet brand heritage and become a modern health and lifestyle brand. In 2015, it embarked on a complete rebrand that included new advertising, packaging and frozen entrée options. The strategy was to get people to see Lean Cuisine anew by igniting a relevant and authentic social conversation about weight and value perception among women, inspiring them to weigh themselves differently.

Idea

Lean Cuisine threw away its antiquated relationship with dieting to become an advocate for healthy lifestyles, inspiring women everywhere to weigh themselves differently and begin authentic discussions about weight and value perception. The campaign kicked off with this beautiful and emotionally powerful launch video featuring real women weighing their accomplishments – such as becoming a parent, making Dean’s List as a single mother, and traveling the world – in lieu of weighing their bodies. We seeded the video on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and utilized paid media, PR and influencer marketing to amplify Lean Cuisine’s message and spread the word.

To build on that conversation, artist Annica Lydenberg brought women’s real accomplishments, successes and proudest moments to life by painting hundreds of bathroom scales that were mounted on a wall stretching across nearly the entire width of Vanderbilt hall in Grand Central and captured content for the next video. The Diet Filter was the third act of the #WeighThis campaign, which launched in Jan and was an innovative way to mute the barrage of weight loss conversations, literally. The campaign featured a downloadable Google Chrome™ browser extension and a prototype #WeighThis Diet Filter hardware device for TV, which block and mute the word “diet.”

Results

#WeighThis was an integral part of Lean Cuisine’s holistic turnaround strategy and largely contributed to the brand seeing its first sales increase in six years despite nearly a 56% decline in media spend year-over-year. The brand has seen 38 straight weeks of positive year-over-year sales since the original #WeighThis video launched. 

The campaign as a whole garnered more than 211 million impressions and was featured across 680 media placements. Lean Cuisine brand mentions tripled year-over-year, increasing its competitive share of voice by 19% from the prior year. The campaign a success, contributing to a 33% increase in positive brand perception, and reducing share of negative conversations to 4%, from the previous year’s share of 25%.