Also, just a comment about the training – as a crew person/trainer, these new procedures for the waight watchers meals are insanely weird. Each crew person is expected to know about the weight watchers meals, what goes in them, and how much goes in.

If you really think McDonalds is the king of fatty foods, you’ll fidn that it’s quite easy to et a 6 inch sub from subway that has more calories than a cheeseburger combo…

As a fitness professional I wear a biased hat, however if I take off my coaching hat and look at it through business eyes.

I think it does a great job marketing BOth companies & the benefit will be in 10yrs time when the kids who go in to macs now subconsciously think tat both WW & macs are a “healthy” place to lose weight!

They have just united and created another perception that they are both “healthy”!

I hope it fails but diet coke is still a better alternative, “yeah rite”!!

Actually, if we drink powerade it’s scientifically proven to increase performance like the all blacks!! To me it’s the same thing as Ww and macs but no one talks about that?!

Thanks all for great comments!

-Ben

My spin is I guess devils advocate-ish but by judging this as fail are we being ‘elite-ist’… McD’s the big evil empire tricking WW and customers again? does this position assume WW and customers are not capable of making the ‘right’ decision

I guess you could suggest WW wants to make its members feel ‘normal’ and given McD’s is part of the ‘normal’ world by agreeing to the alliance they are enabling their customers to be part of it wihtout feeling ‘deviant’

Yes McD’s reasoning can be easily understood, but WW could also acheive their objective too…

In the end its the customers who decide and most of us see thru marketings familar ruses – and even those who don’t should be free to make their own choices

Yeah… that doesn’t surprise me. At least they’re being transparent about admitting SOME coin is changing hands.

This could be the beginning of the end for WW…. they’re very old school in the sense that their brand is their biggest asset. Once they’ve lost that, the game is over.

If the WW logo is indiscriminately plastered on everything, it becomes about as meaningless as the “healthy heart” tick.

Remember that one? Me neither.

I’d like to hope that their brand manager fought against this tooth and nail!

I can’t help but wonder if (and how much) money changed hands – I’d guess McDonald’s had to buy this endorsement. The fact that they just slapped the Weight Watchers logo on existing products sure indicates that this was more of a “deal” than a collaboration.

It’ll also be worth noting that purchasing ANY side dish, desert, fries… or whatever, would take the meal WAY beyond 6.5 “points”

… and McDonald’s staff are trained to deliberately ask for the up-sell.

- Peter

Was at a 52 week high back in late Feb but down $10 in the past 30 days, $8 from it’s 52 week low. Quite a sizeable selloff on less than 1 Million shares traded daily.

Usually, bending your standards for profit implies desperation, but I could just be naive. :)

An article here agrees with your assessment:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/03/08/could-the-weight-watchers-deal-with-maccas-promote-weight-gain/

And to me it just seems like a money grab – but Weight Watchers image is now forever tarnished, McD looks healthy and carries on.

My mother was always very overweight while her partner and I were fit, healthy and active. We’d often get fast food. One year she decided to go on a diet and joined Weight Watchers. Because of this, she’d never be able to eat fast food with us, as we would do on the way to watch sporting events, or on Friday night at the beach, etc. If this had existed then, she would have been able to at least join in with us when we went to McD’s instead of feeling like she had to go somewhere else.

Besides, eating healthily isn’t going to make a difference if you’re not active, just like overeating while being active. It’s about portion control and burning off the excess. I mean we’ve got All Black backs who openly admit to eating McDonald’s day after day, but they don’t put on a thing. Hell, Usain Bolt eats 20 McNuggets as part of his diet, and we all saw what Michael Phelps eats.