A ‘message of hope': Can Oprah’s Weight Watchers investment help us lose weight?.
Oprah Winfrey’s investment in Weight Watchers rocked the dieting world with the announcement that she will join the board and hold a 10 percent share in Weight Watchers. But anyone who follows pop culture has watched Oprah’s turn-to-gold touch for decades—on books and magazines, movies and television, fashion and lifestyle products, on politics and political causes, and on making stars out of nobodies she has embraced.“I believe in the program so much I decided to invest in the company and partner in its evolution,” the talkshow host turned billionaire businesswoman said on Monday as she announced the deal, which includes personal endorsements and a seat for her on the company’s board.BEIJING — Asian stock markets were muted Tuesday after China’s better-than-expected quarterly growth figure revived expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike.NEW YORK — Amazon is stepping up its fight against bogus product reviews on its site, suing more than 1,000 people for allegedly offering to post glowing write-ups for as little as $5 apiece.
But can the “Oprah effect” go beyond a stock price bump for Weight Watchers and actually help Americans lose weight? “This is a nation with a tremendous problem with weight,” says Leslie Bonci, nutritionist and owner of Active Eating Advice. “Maybe this will put a little bit more interest in [weight loss] because Oprah said so.” However, Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center, cautions people against using Oprah as a role model when it comes to weight loss. “I love Oprah…[but] she is clearly not a weight management expert,” says Katz. “She struggles with her weight…her interest may not mean anything more than this is the latest thing she tried.” Unlike some weight loss programs Oprah has tried in the past, Weight Watchers, which has been around since 1963, is focused on long-term changes dietary habits. There’s no fasting, no emphasis on sham “miracle” foods —Cabbage Soup Diet, anyone? —and no eliminating entire food groups. “When you look at everything out there and there are a lot of [diets] that come under the umbrella of fad. [Weight Watchers] is not a fad,” says Bonci.
Weight Watchers has suffered from a shift in what US consumers consider to be healthy, as shoppers increasingly choose natural foods over diet programmes. That makes Winfrey a paper profit of $45.6m. “Weight Watchers has given me the tools to begin to make the lasting shift that I and so many of us who are struggling with weight have longed for,” she said in a statement. Other sites that depend on customer-generated reviews, including Yelp and TripAdvisor, use computer algorithms and teams of investigators to detect fraudulent write-ups. Winfrey has long shared her battle with weight loss with her millions of fans, and once wheeled a red wagon filled with 30kg (67lb) of fat on to her talkshow to reveal just how much weight she had lost.
While both a cookie and an apple might have the same number of calories, for example, they have different points assigned to them, two and zero respectively. Oprah’s Favorite Things, products she has featured on her show or in her successful magazine, O, very shortly become America’s favorite things after she spotlights them. CHINA GROWTH: Economic growth in the July-September quarter decelerated to 6.9 percent, its lowest level since early 2009, but barely changed from 7 percent in each of the two preceding quarters. Winfrey plans to publicly document her experiences on the programme and appear in advertisements, following previous endorsements by singers Jennifer Hudson and Jessica Simpson.
Along with Obama, Oprah is among the most influential African-Americans in the nation’s history; certainly, she’s the richest, having made billions over the years. At one point in the mid-’80s, before launching the syndicated gabfest that turned her into the most powerful woman on television, Winfrey had five different publishers keen to ink a book deal about losing weight. Now her Midas touch on Main Street has now moved to Wall Street, says Howard Bragman, chairman and founder of 15 Minutes Public Relations, who’s known Oprah since her Chicago local-TV days 30 years ago. “As much power as Oprah has, she has used her power for good—she hasn’t invested to just watch her stock go up.” says Bragman. “And the reason she is so powerful is her authenticity. When my engine runs down, my drug of choice is food.” Weight Watchers, founded by Jean Nidetch in her Brooklyn kitchen 52 years ago, has struggled to maintain its relevance as the weight loss market has dramatically shifted to weight tracking and exercise apps such as Fitbit, and other online services, most of which are free. Investors had been expecting a lower number, and some forecasts were particularly pessimistic, so the outcome was a positive for the global economic outlook.
Winfrey was regarded as America’s most influential celebrity for years thanks to her daily talk show, magazine, book club and production company Harpo. FED EXPECTATIONS: Investors were convinced the Federal Reserve held off raising interest rates in September because it was uncertain about how much global economic growth, and China’s growth in particular, was weakening. Example: Toni Morrison—whom Oprah loves and whose books were chosen four times (the most individual picks for one author) for the club—got a bigger sales boost from Oprah than from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Jim Chambers, Weight Watchers chief executive, said: “Through our conversations, it became clear that there is a tremendous alignment between Oprah’s intention and our mission. She and her club, which was created for her long-running daytime talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, had a huge impact, not just on the publishing industry and book sales but on the idea of reading for pleasure itself.
We believe that her remarkable ability to connect and inspire people to realize their full potential is uniquely complementary to our powerful community, extraordinary coaches and proven approach.” Winfrey has the option to buy a further 5% of the company, but she is prevented from selling any shares for two years to show that she has faith in the long-term prospects for the company. But the fact Chinese growth didn’t collapse in the third quarter removes one argument in financial markets for interest rates to be left at record lows. Twenty of her picks made it to No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list. (The Oprah pick with the most consecutive weeks at No. 1 was Ekhart Tolle’s A New Earth at 11 weeks.) After she left her talk show, she relaunched the Book Club as 2.0 in 2012 and has made picks much less frequently than she did during her talk show’s heyday.
Before the deal was announced, the company’s share price had collapsed by 72% so far this year and sales had fallen by more than 20% in both its first two quarters. Winfrey will buy nearly 6.4 million shares of Weight Watchers at Friday’s closing price of $6.79 per share, and she will receive options to buy another 5 percent. Judges Shirley and Tjaart are looking for real talent, natural instinct and baking brilliance –but have all the ten remaining bakers got what it takes? As part of a rebranding exercise earlier this year, the company said it was ditching celebs in order to focus on the lives of real people with a new TV campaigning called “My Butt”. Weight Watchers is trying to woo clients who formerly focused on counting calories but who are now more interested in pursuing “health and wellness,” a trend that can encompass everything from consuming more natural ingredients to foods that are high in protein.
When DreamTime’s Foot Cozys, aromatherapy slippers, were featured in 2002, sales spiked to 20,000 pairs per month (up from 3,000) and became DreamTime’s best-selling product that year. “There’s never been any question that when Oprah speaks, people listen—her word is very powerful,” says Bragman. “If she picks a book, books sales go through the roof. The commercial was described by Weight Watchers ad agency as “a montage of one personal life [that] just happens to be filmed through the lens of her butt”. Winfrey falls into Weight Watchers’ target audience of “ageing females who want to look and feel their best”, said Gary Stibel, chief executive of New England Consulting Group, who has previously worked with the company. While the short crust pastry base, lemon custard-filling and fluffy meringue topping seems familiar and easily achievable, some of the bakers find themselves up against it as the meringue bake becomes a leveller. From this point on, that’s not a major part of our story.” Nidetch, and the other Weight Watcher founders, became a multimillionaires when the company floated in 1968, and even richer a decade later when it was sold to Heinz for $71.2m.
— ASSOCIATED PRESS BEIJING — China’s economy decelerated in the latest quarter but stronger spending by consumers helped to avert a deeper downturn. Bakers are required to create a thirty centimetre tower comprising 36 perfect macarons with two varieties of sweet macarons and one variety of savoury macarons. OWN is doing just fine, thank you.” Don’t forget her career as an actress: She’s done only a handful of movies but she earned an Oscar nomination for her first role (1985’s The Color Purple), another for 2013’s The Butler, and her lead in a 1998 adaptation of Morrison’s Beloved, was acclaimed. China’s slowdown has unnerved global markets and held down worldwide growth, especially in countries such as Brazil and Australia that export raw materials to China. Along with her role in 2014’s Selma, Oprah’s film career shows she picks projects that depict, either in fiction or non-fiction, the history of the African-American experience—a history she cares about and wants America to know more about.
In her book, she said she was motivated to found Weight Watchers when she ran into a neighbour at the supermarket who said: “Oh, Jean, you look so good! On Thursday, as a guest on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Winfrey talked about how childhood classmates called her “the preacher girl,” given her propensity to quote the Gospels.
The auto club said the current price of a gallon of regular, unleaded gasoline is 17 cents below the national average and $1.08 below levels a year ago. — JACK NEWSHAM SAN FRANCISCO — Google is escalating an attack on Microsoft’s lucrative Office software, an attempt to hit its longtime rival where it will hurt most. Google is targeting companies and government agencies that pay for Microsoft’s suite of word processing, e-mail, calendar, spreadsheet, and other programs. The price for the ‘‘Google for Work’’ software will be waived for the duration of the customers’ existing contracts with Microsoft or any other supplier.
Greenfield “made an indelible mark on our company,” Eppinger said. “He will be remembered as a professional with great passion and commitment, and as someone who made an important difference during his time with us.” Warren Barnes, vice president and corporate controller, will serve as acting principal accounting officer. Davis, Stephen DiCarmine, and Joel Sanders of 58 charges of falsifying business records in two partial verdicts but could not agree on 93 other charges, including more serious offenses such as grand larceny and securities fraud. The institutional securities division, which includes Morgan Stanley’s investment banking and trading operations, had net income of $688 million, down by nearly half from $1.2 billion a year earlier.