Working Mother sells diet to captive audience
November 27, 2007 | Advertising,Ethics,Health,PR,Work,Working Mother
Remember how Working Mother “teamed up with” Medela to sell more breast pumps make sure companies support breastfeeding employees? Well, Working Mother also is “in partnership with” Kraft Foods Inc. to sell diet food offer employees “nutritious food.”
Kraft (a “100 best” company and major advertiser) and Working Mother held the “first-ever Office Kitchen Takeover” at SC Johnson‘s corporate and manufacturing facilities in Racine, Wis. (SC Johnson is a “100 best” company and major advertiser.) They stocked the company’s kitchen for a day with Kraft’s South Beach Diet prepackaged foods on Sept. 18, 2007, for a captive audience of some 2,500 employees.
“SC Johnson is on our ‘100 Best Companies’ due to its family-oriented culture and its commitment to helping employees strike a good work/life balance,” says Tammy Palazzo, Vice President of Research and Women’s Initiative, Working Mother Magazine. “The South Beach Diet(R) Office Kitchen Takeover awards the company even further by providing healthier food options for busy employees — from the convenience of their own office cafeteria.”
Touted as healthy, convenient, nutritious and delicious, the South Beach Diet is a weight-loss plan, according to Kraft’s own press release, with three phases that couldn’t possibly have been implemented in one day. What’s next? Weekly weigh-ins?
If they were really interested in providing employees with healthy snacks, why not “take over” the kitchen with baskets of fruits, vegetables and nuts? But where’s the selling point in that?
Not only does Working Mother offer its 2.2 million readers as a target audience for advertisers, it now uses employees of “100 best” companies/advertisers as a captive target audience.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Kraft is sooo not healthy. I’ve actually proposed that the word “Kraft” be added to the dictionary as a new adjective that means “Fake, foods made from synthetics, chemicals and additives and sold as natural, nutritious foods.”
November 28th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Amazing.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Actually the magazine should be called Working Consumerist Mother if we’re all for truth in advertising.
As for Kraft, you have to hand it to them. The starchiest, fattest thing one can make from a box became the National Dinner of Canada. That takes some serious marketing.
December 9th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Golly, what’s wrong with “Cheese food?”
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7806sci2.html