Food-related advertising that does and doesn’t work | WW, OzHarvest

Posted in Advertising by tjwithersauthor

The worst rebrand I’ve ever seen happened years ago, in 2018, but I only saw it last year, and this post sat in my drafts for 6 months. Let’s talk about what happened when Weight Watchers decided they needed to make themselves cool again!

Why the Weight Watchers rebrand just doesn’t work

Weight Watchers reckons their new brand, WW, stands for ‘Wellness that Works’.

Umm, sure.

The new Weight Watchers packaging for one of their frozen meals, a mushroom & pumpkin risotto, features a big "WW" — The new Weight Watchers packaging for one of their frozen meals, a mushroom & pumpkin risotto, features a big “WW”.

Nobody is fooled — their product is still diet food.

And while the packaging looks fine, the concept is flawed.

Say it out loud with me.

WW.

“Double you, double you.”

WTF?

I laughed sooo hard looking at their new packaging, and realising what they’d done.

A diet food company that’s brand literally says it will double you?

What genius thought that was a good idea?

As if we didn’t have enough reasons to hate diet culture already…

The latest round of OzHarvest ads I saw in the Brisbane CBD in 2021 were amazing. They were eye-catching and thought-provoking.

2021 ad for OzHarvest shows a cauliflower and cloud of greenhouse gases, along with the slogan "wasting food is worse than flying". — The 2021 ads for OzHarvest featured the slogan “wasting food is worse than flying”.

The ad I’ve highlighted here is OzHarvest’s 2021 ad, which I used to walk past every day on my way home from work (when we were — oh so briefly — allowed back into the office). It shows a cauliflower and cloud of greenhouse gases, along with the slogan “wasting food is worse than flying”.

The eye-catching bright yellow colour, combined with the thought-provoking message, really caught my attention, and I saw other passers-by staring at the sign for a long time, as well.

It works for multiple reasons.

It’s the cognitive dissonance of thinking, “Me throwing out that rotten zucchini that I forgot was in the vegetable drawer of my fridge … that was worse than flying overseas? Really? But I pride myself on my eco-conscious behaviours!”

It’s memorable, mainly because it’s so hard to believe. I will never forget this ad that said wasting food causes more greenhouse gases than an airplane flight.

And although I didn’t immediately remember which brand had posted the ad (the #1 test for any advertising in my opinion – brand recall), I was able to look it up so easily on Google using the slogan, which was unforgettable.

Any more thoughts about why this advertising works? Let me know in the comments!

(C) TJ Withers-Ryan 2022. Credit me when sharing.

23May2015

Taste: Inspiring the senses for readers

Posted in Creativity by tjwithersauthor

Our amazing wedding cake was created by Allana Rowan and decorated by Kathryn Ryan, both very talented creators.

Today’s post will make you drool. Be warned.

I was looking up recipes for a dairy-free, gluten-free cheesecake today and stumbled upon an idea. (The idea sounds ridiculous but the recipes I found look amazing and I simply cannot wait any longer! I have lived for three and a half years now without cheesecake and it is lame.)

But while I was looking at those recipes, I found a link to ‘best recipes in literature’. It brought back the best memories ever!

Taste is one of the most powerful memory-making senses. A good meal can make a day; a bad meal can break it. And when we read about meals in books, it brings us into the story in a powerful way.

Below are some of the most memorable food recipes I found in beloved storybooks, but first, here’s the writing tip for today.

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9Oct2014

Semantic satiation: Don’t kill your reader

Posted in Creativity by tjwithersauthor

Recently I was editing a novel where the author had used the “text method” of writing. I don’t mean that they included texts in their story. I mean that they wrote “dont” instead of “don’t”.

So I’ve just spent an hour straight hitting “Ctrl+F” (Find and Replace) to fix the variations of “dont” that have appeared throughout the story. I’ve literally looked at the same one word over and over, to the point where the correct word, “don’t”, doesn’t even seem like a real word anymore.

Dont.

Dont’.

Donnt.

Donut…? (Mmmmm, donuts… *immediately breaks diet*)

I was telling a well-educated friend of mine about it and he told me that this is called semantic satiation. (Not to be confused with Semantic Saturation, the progressive rock metal band.)

Semantic satiation is the proper term for when you’ve been looking at a word for so long that it loses its meaning to you and just looks weird. It happens because the neurons that are responsible for that word are temporarily worn out from overuse. But what can I do about it?

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