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Nicole McInnes on telling stories of transformation at WW
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Nicole McInnes on telling stories...
Nicole McInnes, Director of Marketing and Commercial at WW, sits down with host Mark Jones to discuss rebranding Weight Watchers, balancing short term needs with long term planning during a crisis, and the commerciality of marketing.
COVID-19 has seen organisations more reliant on their digital marketing strategy than ever before.
While this pivot away from long-term growth and business improvement, and towards risk mitigation, considered messaging, and ultimately ensuring business continuity is understandable – how can marketers start to think about strategy and driving long-term value again in order to remain competitive on the other side of the pandemic?
Nicole McInnes, Director of Marketing and Commercial at WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers, says providing continuity, connection and routine at the height of the crisis was critical to customer/member retention and maintaining engagement.
WW's solution to the challenge presented by COVID-19 came in the form of live virtual workshops via the award-winning WW app following its rebranding, and switching from face-to-face studio engagements to virtual offerings globally.
"We rebranded in 2019 and changed our name from Weight Watchers to WW as our offering had significantly depended in its digital format. I think we are now providing a programme that helps you be the healthiest version of yourself, by focusing on holistic wellness and making sure that weight is just one element of that," Nicole says.
"So health as related mainly to food and weight is probably our core business and always has been. But we recognise that health is more than one dimension which is why we introduced fitness videos, live workouts and built a platform for virtual meetings all in one app."
Although health and wellness marketers have had their physical engagement with members restricted by COVID-19, Nicole says that it is important to remain agile in the face of change, find new ways to focus on the customer experience, and when the time feels right begin to look to the future again
"We moved our face-to-face workshop members to virtual programmes in just five days. It was important for us to make sure that our members were still able to meet with coaches and get the support they needed to say accountable," Nicole says. "Use this time to innovate and take massive risks because you've got the ability to do it. This is the only time you will be forgiven for taking a leap as you have got nothing to lose."
"I think around two weeks ago I did a six month plan. And it's still really top line and we're starting to now look at the details of that. I actually said in one of my meetings with my MD last week, I said, "a detailed marketing plan is coming." And he didn't ask for it, I just need it. I need to do it. I'm kind of in that mindset now where I don't want to just look a week ahead, I want to look to the end of the year and into January."
Tune into this episode of The CMO Show to find out how WW shifted physical engagements to virtual to continue to support their members achieve their goals during COVID-19 .
WW app
WW's virtual workshops
WW's shift from physical to virtual offerings
Brent Hill on video content and collaboration during COVID-19 at SATC
Ashley Killeen on brand storytelling during COVID-19 at OzHarvest
Fiona Le Brocq on brand relevance
The CMO Show production team
Producers – Charlotte Goodwin & Stephanie Woo
Audio Engineers – Tom Henderson & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We'd love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au.
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Nicole McInnes
Mark Jones:
At the height of a crisis, we're all about satisfying short term needs. The focus shifts from business as usual to risk mitigation, considered messaging and ultimately ensuring business continuity. But what does storytelling on the road to crisis recovery look like? How does the way we operate change as the dark clouds begin to part and how do we balance what we need to keep doing right now with thinking strategically about where we want to be further down the road.
Hello everyone. Mark Jones here. Great to have you with us again on The CMO Show. My very special guest today is Nicole McInnes. She's director of marketing and commercial at WW previously known as Weight Watchers. We invited Nicole on The CMO Show, this is the second time actually, she joined us the first time back in 2015, when she was director of marketing at the music streaming service Pandora.
So this time she's now come back to talk about rebranding and how to balance short term needs with long-term planning during a crisis and the commerciality of marketing. So it's really interesting to hear her career. She's gone from all that time ago, back in the Pandora days to now, and the work that she's actually been doing recently when we recorded this, it was in May. So they just had a TVC launch for the #strongertogether campaign. And that was made in response to the challenges presented by COVID-19.
So it's a really interesting case study to look at how you can respond to a crisis in the midst of a crisis, which is a, it's a fascinating case study for you to get your head around and to learn from her experience. So it's a really good conversation. Make sure you get a lot out of it. You might even need to take a few notes for this one. So let's go now to my interview with Nicole McInnes, director of marketing and commercial at WW.
My special guest today is Nicole McInnes. Great to have you on the show again.
Nicole McInnes:
It's great to be here.
Some of our loyal listeners might remember that five years ago, you were episode number five guest, and you're at Pandora at the time. So things have changed, have they not?
Yes. And I think that the thing that has changed the most is how old I feel, but it has changed. And I do remember, I do recall the interview, it was really fun.
At the time we spoke about how Pandora had survived or was surviving the dot-com crash, look where we are now.
I actually don't really know, like Pandora still exists, don't they?
Yeah. They're actually huge in the US, and I saw a document recently at WW and I was so excited to see that they were really high on the efficiency list of channels that we use in the US and it warmed my heart. I was like, "Oh, there they are. They're still there. They're still delivering amazing results for marketers." So I was very pleased with that.
Hey, so people will also be listening and saying, "WW, what's going on there?" We should start with the whole rebranding. And then I want to talk a bit about the COVID-19 pivot that guys have been on, but tell me about the brand.
Yeah, the brand took a really drastic change in 2019 and changed his name to WW. And look, it's been … whenever you change your brand, it's a journey and you have to take all of your members on it. And we're still saying, Weight Watchers Reimagined, so people can understand that it was Weight Watchers. But it was a change I think that was really needed because the offering had significantly deepened in its digital format. And the name was I think holding it back and keeping it in the past, when in fact it's such a vibrant digital business now that it kind of deserved a new positioning, and I think the rebrand did that for it.
So you mentioned the digital, but what was broken with the name Weight Watchers?
The thing about where we're at as a society now is that weight shaming is a real problem, and it's not acceptable in society. Whatever weight you are is kind of … if you're happy in your skin, that should be fine. So to actually have a brand name that had weight in it did have sort of negative connotations that we didn't want to project and we didn't believe in our own purpose. So we're very much now focused on holistic wellness and making sure that weight is just one element of that, but mindset and activity and all of those things together make a person well and happy, not just their weight.
I think that's fantastic. Obviously you've got to track with the times, right?
And the respect of the individuals, and I commend you for that. And so why did you go with the acronym? You feel like the shortened version versus a completely different name?
I think that we did … one of those funny things, the brand I think turns 57 this year. And so you don't want to lose that amazing brand equity either. So it's important, it was important to balance the fact that we were not ashamed of our past. We were not ashamed of what happened in the 1960s. We're really proud of that legacy and what we've done to change people's lives over so many years. So we didn't want to lose, throw the baby out with the bath water. We wanted to keep that legacy and be proud of it, but also give it a modern edge.
Yeah, I like that. So you're really preserving that legacy as you say and the brand equity, and not kind of pretending it doesn't exist and you're embracing this new story. That's fantastic. Now, also the other thing we've got to think about these days is not just the personal side of things that you spoke about, but competition. And if you're in the health and wellness space, you're not just competing with other brands in the same categories, you're competing with outdoor lifestyle activities, DIYInstagram people. What's the mindset that you bring to competition and how you frame that whole brand journey with that endless list of possibilities?
I know. It's such a broad competition set. The category that we're in, you could define it as narrow, but it's exploded like you said, like the amount of apps that we're competing with, the amount of food delivery is now edging into our space as well. It's just broadened the whole… when you think about the competitors who we are competing with. I think what I try to do to stop myself from freaking out by that is really focus on what makes us different and unique. And one of the key USPs that we hold dear is that we're an enabler. We actually, we are kind of DIY, but we can extend out of DIY if you like, because we do sell some foods, but we're not a food delivery company in our core. So we're kind of, we like to see ourselves as enabling people's health within their life as it is now. So we try to make it as easy and with as much freedom as is possible for them still to be successful, but they can do the cooking, they can choose the foods that they like to eat. They don't have to get certain foods delivered. They don't have to stick to a strict diet that we tell them it has to be this. So there's a real sort of nice freedom about the programme that lets people bring themselves to it and adapt it to them.
You make reference to food delivery companies, you make reference to food preparation.
What business are you really in?
I think we are really in providing a programme that helps you be the healthiest version of yourself, and weight is key to that. I'm not going to shy away from that. We are doing research studies on diabetes and heart conditions, and all those results will be coming into the programme over the next year, as we focus on those different conditions. So health as related mainly to food and weight is probably our core business and always has been. But we recognise that it's not the only pump health, and we want to make sure that we're covering in one app all those different elements as well. And we've been quite successful at expanding our core business and adding on activity guidance.
And we've got fitness videos on, but we've also got live workouts on at the moment because of our new platform that we've built for the virtual meeting. So there's all these other … and we've got mindset in there with Headspace, and then we've got the blog with all the articles and we've got the research running in the US all the time on making sure the programme is scientifically sound. So yeah, that's the core, but we have expanded out to make sure that we are not just looking at health from one dimension.
like a marketer, I'm still thinking back at the beginning of the brief and ticking off all the boxes, like your audience. Because we were talking before about the fifties and the sixties. How has the audience changed? And are you still after that largely female dominated perspective, or what are you thinking about? How has that mindset changed?
Yeah. Look, we've expanded our audience relevance as much as we can. But of course there's still so much love from our initial audience, which is female. So we still dominate in that area, but I've got sort of like a three year plan in my head to make the brand relevant for that expanded audience, which includes younger people and men. We've already got a lot younger with our app and with our sort of digital presence, and how the programme can be sort of a companion to you. And that's really helpful with that sort of task of like making sure that we're not just a company that attracts older people. But I would love to become relevant to men.
You've gone from, oh my gosh, we can't see anybody anymore to virtual, whatever that is. What was that like?
Yeah. Look, I think maybe the key thing for the transformation that happened back in March was that we did it in five days. And the reason we could do it in five days is like, and what we did was basically move all of our face to face workshop members to a virtual format. The reason we could do that was because of all the work and the legacy work that had gone into the app already and also into the transformation of the company in general. We were already like centralised globally on Zoom as our supplier for video conferencing. So it was easy to pick up the phone and sort of say to them, "Look, we need to use this now, not just internally, but for our members."
And so the solution was able to be built so quickly because of all those pillars already in place. What people probably don't realise is that the majority of our base now is digital and the minority is meeting face to face. So it was for a smaller group, but then they are loyal group and they're a group that has arguably a little bit faster success on the programme because of the accountability that they have face to face. So it's very important audience for us. So it was so key to make sure they were still meeting and still getting that support. And it yeah, five days of furious work globally, which I've never seen before in my career. It was very impressive.
Amazing. So have you integrated Zoom into your mobile app? Give us a sense of what the experience is like.
Initially it was Zoom links and the journey was still in the app that you would jump out of the app to experience the workshop and within I think a couple of weeks from that initial sort of minimum viable product launch, we actually integrated Zoom into the app as well. So it's now all within the app for the member, which makes it a really seamless experience.
It's interesting when you think about that digital iteration that you've been on, how quickly you've had to pivot and develop these new solutions. I'm interested in how you delivered a quality customer experience because we know how important getting that right is.
Look, to be fair, I think it was an MVP situation after five days and we've had to iterate and iterate and iterate to improve it for the member. I think given the circumstances and that we're in crisis, the members have been so patient with the experience not being as perfect as it would have been if we'd spent the normal six month project time on an experience like this, which it really would have needed in a normal situation. So things like how to find their workshop in the virtual world were not as great as it could be initially, and we've fixed that.
And the instructions initially coming out of the app and then getting the link and then understanding Zoom and having to download another app was really hard for them, so that we solve that. So we've just been getting their feedback and staying really close to them to the point where when it first launched, our coaches were actually calling members on the phone to see how they were coping and what was going on, and if they had any issues. So we went into really high touch member care to make sure that they were okay and also bearing with us as we got this right.
So where are you in the business with planning? How far out are you going? Are you allowing yourself to get three, six, 12 months ahead, or are you just staying in that very tight management iteration cycle?
Yeah. It's funny how … I think we've been around 10 weeks in remote now, and the first sort of four to six were definitely very, very short term. But I think around two weeks ago I did a six month plan. And it's still really top line and we're starting to now look at the details of that. I actually said I think in one of my meetings with my MD last week, I said, "I put on the list when also [inaudible 00:22:46] said a detailed marketing plan is coming." And he didn't ask for it, I just need it. I need to do it, I need to … So I'm kind of in that mindset now where I don't want to just look a week ahead, I want to look to the end of the year and into January.
If you think about some of your peers in the CMO community, in the marketing community, What contingencies are you putting in place? Are you lowering your expectations? What are you doing?
I like a target that's sometimes not achievable. I'm kind of used to that from my time at Dell I think. My advice, I think, to my peers would be, be easy on yourself and on your staff, and to plan definitely within the environment and the business environment that you're working in and the impact you're seeing. But also using the time to innovate and just completely like taking massive risks right now, because you've got the ability to do it. This will be the only time you will be forgiven for taking a leap. And doing things faster without the 20 sign-offs that you normally had to get, like this is the time to take those risks, do those tests, and we've got nothing to lose, so it's exciting in a sense.
Yeah. And I've heard people daring to say, "Don't risk a crisis." I know it's a cliche, but people are starting to feel like they can actually use that phrase intentionally in a positive way to say let's try and find an opportunity to innovate, right?
It's almost like the window for that is potentially shrinking, right? I think that's fascinating.
Yeah. That's right. That's how I would view anyone who's really struggling with results right now. It's a real nothing to lose situation, which is great, because normally the risk is what stopped you from innovating. So if there's nothing to lose, then take the risk I would say.
Does risk equal just hacking or are you maintaining or spending more? Where are you at on marketing budgets in this time.
Yeah. Well, I think he probably, this probably came out in my Pandora interview. I love finding ways to do things either internally or different ways to do things that are not sort of the traditional way. And we've just done that with a campaign that went live today actually, where we just used the members' UGC and edited it together and did it in 10 days and it was completely hacked together. So I think budgets – I'm the sort of person, and this got drilled into me a while ago, the commerciality and the return on investment marketing's always been really a big thing in the roles that I've had. So money, I'm not very good at just spending money for spending money sake. I'm very conscious of wanting to have good ROIs on the dollars that I do spend and deliver and contribute to the business. So I will adjust budgets every time I see. If I see the top line move, I'll adjust the budgets to inline so that we maintain profitability or growth or whatever the goal is, is fine.
I think it's always a shame when you see marketers either being put on the fringe of the commercial side of the business, or because I think there's a lot to leverage if they're given the chance. On the other hand, there's marketers that are averse to commerciality at times, and therefore CEOs who are frustrated with them. So there's kind of two sides to the problem. But I think, I mean, I was lucky enough to be in an acquisition role that was marketing dollar to sales measured on a daily basis when I was at Dell early in sort of my marketing career. And so it kind of ruined me for any wastage. I mean, so I'm kind of the other extreme I think.
But luckily I can balance that with my creative background and because I still love brand and understand branding, and I'm not just sitting on Google Analytics and living and breathing that side of the business. But I've managed to marry the two together, but I'm very, very passionate about marketing being a commercial force in any business. I think it is the growth engine. And look, it's easier for me because the companies that I've attracted to and that I've worked in have all got sales feeding back in very clearly. Of course there's so many marketers out there that have to do that job without that feedback loop, which I can't imagine, because I've not sort of taken that challenge on. I'm the sort of person that does need that, I've got used to it and quite spoiled by it. Their contribution to the business is equal, but it's just not … they just don't have that really nice feedback loop into everything that they do, which makes it a little bit harder to justify their different decisions and their spends.
So would your advice then be, choose the company wisely that you work for? What's your advice? Because it seems like you've chosen well.
Yeah, look, I've chosen what suits me and what I believe in. And I know myself well enough to know that if I wasn't able to contribute directly to the panel, that I would feel uncomfortable, so that's just me. I think that there's so many other marketers that either can't or don't have that visibility and they're equally, their role and their job is equally as valid. But yeah, I think you have to choose what is right for you and your experience and what you've done in the past. I mean, if you throw someone into the roles that I've been in who doesn't like analytics or BI tools, they wouldn't like it.
I did want to talk a bit more about your members and customers and some of that experience And tell me about that because actually it's fun, but it's also I think quite aspirational for a lot of marketers, because you do want above all loyal customers. So how do you get it?
Yeah. It's the stories that you hear. So sometimes I try to avoid them because they make me cry. So I'm like, "God, I can't hear Anna's story this week because I just can't be an emotional wreck after hearing it."
But we run a global town hall I think probably that pre COVID about four months ago, and there was a little mini doc about one of the members in the US. And then we looked around, we were all crying, we're all just like … So I think that the thing that's so great about a programme like WW, and people who know me know that I'm a cynic, but I can't help but be touched by some of these stories and realise the power of what we are doing in people's lives. I remember saying to someone early on that I was always really excited when I was at eHarmony because we were providing love for people and giving them a relationship which is always so rewarding. Well, not always, but often.
Ideally.
Ideally rewarding. But with health, health is sort of like this central thing that affects everything. It affects relationships, it affects your happiness, it affects your job. It affects so many parts of your life, every part of your life if you like. So to actually be in a role where you are potentially unlocking a root cause of so many other issues in someone's life and fixing it and creating therefore new job opportunities, happiness, better relationships, all those sorts of things is kind of mind-blowing and I'm excited to see what that does in terms of how I changed the way that we communicate around WW.
You referenced storytelling, which is my favourite subject in the universe. And I did write about it. I've got a book out on the subject Beliefonomics. And one of the interesting things about that, you referenced emotion, so the hearts and minds. It's my passion, is that when we tell stories, we actually intentionally chase that emotion in order to change people's belief systems, particularly if you're on the leading edge of, or if you're like the outside edge of, should I go down this path, right. We're in a very highly emotive society. And so in the past, that's been creative driven and occasionally emotive, but the storytelling really needs to get the heartstrings going if you want to affect change. I just wonder how important that's been as a strategy for you.
Yeah. Look, it's funny. I've never thought about it as a thing that I'm into, but I actually really am if I look back at my campaign that when we talked at Pandora, it was unscripted back then. And the one that I just did now was also unscripted. And I realised that what I like to do is tell people stories in an authentic way. And again, because of the companies that I've been in, I've always had the opportunity to do things differently or not in a formulaic kind of way. And I didn't realise as I was doing these things that not scripting a TV ad was a big deal. So yeah, I feel like storytelling is so key. And it actually is my thing without me even knowing it, who knew!
There you go, you've got a bit of a personal revelation. You're like, "Yes, I'm digital and I'm hard, but I'm also a covert storyteller."
It's like, what is marketing? Marketing is about trying to connect with other human beings, that is at its core. And the only way that you do that is through emotion. You can do it with negative emotion and positive emotion, but it has to be extreme emotion. So you can't get that emotional reaction if you don't either surprise and delight, engage or, and other human stories especially if it's relevant for your brand like it is for WW. Those members' stories are, you can't make that stuff up, you just can't.
The authenticity piece is the key.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Paula says, "What do you favour? Emotional transformation stories or incremental and long lasting habit adjustment?"
I'm always going to go for emotion over fact and pragmatism. So if I can tell the latter story of long lasting habit change through an emotional story, that's what I will do. I mean actually that's probably the whole goal is to try and make sure that you never tell something in a features driven pragmatic fact-based way. Because it bores me, so I imagine it would bore my audience as well.
What kind of collaboration opportunities come your way and what would you say yes or no to? It's an interesting question here from one of our listeners because collaboration marketing is still kind of nascent, but it's quite interesting when it works.
Well, we would definitely say no to a partnership that was with a company that would compromise health. So that's kind of where we draw the line. So any company that's selling something that we feel would contradict our purpose we would say no to. But so like we're talking to health insurers, we're talking to food and beverage companies that have healthy products and do healthy production. With the rebrand we globally removed all additives from all of our foods, which was a massive global project back then. So health in whatever we supply is really important to us. So we really draw the line if it didn't align in that sense.
Another question here is lockdown resulted in a noticeable uptick in tasteless jokes and memes about weight gain being shared across social media. Did you notice this shift and did you respond with messaging?
We definitely noticed it. We have responded. So in this period we could have chosen to reduce our advertising. What we've chosen to do instead is to get louder. So that's why we launched today with our TVC about what our members are doing during this time and they've shared some of their challenges in the ad and shared them in longer form for social content, so that people can feel like there are other people going through this isolation struggles and challenges with health. Because as soon as you change your lifestyle and your habits, these are the things that go out the window. So it's important that they know that if it has gotten really out of hand that we are here to help.
Well, Nicole, I've really enjoyed hearing your story and thank you for so many amazing insights. Thank you so much, and all the best with the amazing work you're doing at WW.
Thanks so much, Mark. It was great to be here again.
Hey, that was Nicole McInnes. I really hope you enjoyed our conversation. It was great to have her with us for the second time. You know, I was thinking about the interview, our conversation, and I really liked hearing about WW's approach to using emotion, to tell authentic customer stories of long lasting habit changes because after all creating long lasting change is one of our big goals in marketing and as storytelling professionals. So I really hope you got a lot out of that interview. If you want more Nicole, you can go all the way back to episode five of the CMO show back in 2015 as I mentioned at the top of the podcast. She talks about surviving the dot com crash at Pandora and her experiences as a woman in the advertising industry in the early 2000s. And look, just a bit of a news flash or you know to break it to you. It wasn't great. It wasn't a great time. So it's worth reflecting on how far we've come or maybe in some cases haven't come very far so a good one to recap. Now, one last thing to talk about too, at the beginning of the episode, I spoke about storytelling on the road to crisis recovery, which is where we are at right now with COVID-19, in Australia, not quite like New Zealand, where they're back to normal, almost it seems with the exception of being able to fly in and out of the country. So, here in Australia, things are still uncertain and we're looking at how we can grow and start planning and thinking about storytelling. What role does it have in our organisation? I was really proud to host a virtual learning event series on this topic, put together by my team here at Filtered Media.
And if you missed out on seeing our first event, I'd highly recommend, says he who hosted the event, I'd highly recommend you check out the recording and we'll include it in the blog a link, And I think you'll get a lot out of it, particularly if you're thinking about storytelling on the road to crisis recovery. So as always, it's great to get your feedback on the show. If you've got any guests, we'd love to hear it. If you've got any topics, suggestions also great to hear it. We get emails all the time, which is always encouraging. You can get us at cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au. And of course, make sure you subscribe to us on all the channels and all the podcast apps and the socials and everything. You'll find us all over the place. So that's it for this episode of The CMO Show take care. And until next time.
The CMO Show is a podcast produced by Filtered Media, a big shout out to our producers, Charlotte Goodwin and Stephanie Woo. The show is engineered and edited by Tom Henderson and Daniel Marr, it's a fantastic team effort. So thanks to all the team.
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