A scandal has just broken here in Canada about Power Bars. i will post
on this:
SHERRI DAY NEW YORK TIMES
Oprah Winfrey has talked about weight loss, hers and everyone else'sfor years. Her protege Dr. Phil has found a way to make money from it.
Dr. Phillip McGraw, whose syndicated talk show, Dr. Phil, is second only to Winfrey's in popularity, began his second season this fall with an ambitious multimedia assault on obesity.
Following the example of Winfrey's continuing series of programs, like her popular book club, he has invited 13 overweight participants to spend a year sweating off pounds and regaining self-confidence under his tough-love tutelage, with many more viewers charting their own progress on the Dr. Phil Web site,
http://www.drphil.com.
An accompanying book, The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys To
Weight Loss Freedom, has been at the top of the best-seller lists, and he is promoting his system in a series on weight loss on NBC's Today program.
But another part of his campaign has taken him far from Winfrey's playbook and led to some criticism. Under a licensing deal with CSA
Nutraceuticals, a start-up in Irving, Texas, McGraw is lending his name and image to a line of nutritional supplements, including vitamin packets, power bars and meal-replacement drinks that began quietly appearing in U.S. stores like Wal-Mart, Walgreen and Target during the summer under the brand name Shape Up.
Of course, celebrity licensing and endorsement deals have long been a mainstay of consumer marketing, but few talk show hosts have so closely associated the products they endorse with the content of their television programs. McGraw's licensing deal with Shape Up crosses another barrier, one that has been regarded as sacred: Unlike books or videos, the products can directly affect viewers' health. And because
McGraw carries the honorific "doctor", though he is a clinical psychologist and not a physician, his critics say that consumers are more likely to trust his recommendations.
"As soon as we heard the prospect of him going into the nutritional food category, it was kind of like `What?'" said Sid Good, the president of Good Marketing, a consumer products consultant in
Cleveland. "It's always different when you step into the medical field.
There are a different set of assumptions that we make as consumers in terms of what our expectations are and the appropriateness of who's giving us the advice.''
The licensing question is amplified because McGraw's success is built to a large degree on his personal appeal and credibility, far more so than most daytime talk show hosts (viewers might hesitate before buying a health product endorsed by Jerry Springer, for example).
In an interview, McGraw said he did not consider the endorsement deal a commercial venture, adding that his proceeds would go to a charitable foundation but also that he would not allow public reaction to dictate his decisions.
"I think it's a good product," he said, "and I'm doing it for a really good reason and purpose, although if I was doing it for a commercial as a brand extension of my own I wouldn't apologize for that either."
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