NYC-HQ’d Weight Watchers is arguably taking viral techniques to the next level by leveraging the popularity of a vlogger named Faint Starlite as part of its latest campaign.
The Milwaukee 24-year-old, whose real name is Esther Brady (pictured), had been chronicling her own weight loss in videos posted on her website, and explicitly crediting it to the use of Weight Watchers techniques. When the company’s AOR, Interpublic Group’s McCann Erickson, recently launched a new ‘Stop dieting, start living’ campaign, a complementary deal was cut with Starlite.
‘We want her to be a brand apostle,’ says agency CCO Joyce King Thomas. ‘We built her a place to live [on MySpace] and we’re going to let it spread virally.’ The vlogger is now explicitly crediting her corporeal transformation to the spirit of the campaign’s tagline. But as yet there are no plans to incorporate her into the ad campaign, says King Thomas. ‘We want her to do what she does: be a video blogger with a huge fan base.’
