Thinking aloud

I am very late to the Chocolate Rain phenomenon. In case you are one of the remaining 50 people who don’t know about Tay Zonday’s famous (>13M views!) music video, I’ve embedded the YouTube video below. Be sure you also watch the related videos, including the Chad Vader spoof and Tay’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Back the to main purpose of this post: it’s time to bash the purported “weight loss” drug Alli again. Last summer, I both railed against and sympathized with the marketers of this “miracle drug.” I empathized with the plight of marketers who have to market a drug that, uh, “soils” your clothes with….here it comes…an ugly chocolate rain as it works. Then, I whined about those same marketers minimizing these effects on people.

Then, last week, I was in a Wal-Mart and was stopped dead in my tracks by the display captured in the cell phone photo above. Look at the bottom of the retail display. It says, “can you commit to this?” Cleanly designed and mostly white brochures that match the nice white packaging of the “starter kit” of Alli on the display explain that low-fat foods reduce, the…yes, I am going to say it again…”chocolate rain effects.”

The pun on commitment to achieving a diet goal strikes me as the most cynical marketing I’ve ever seen. It’s not about commitment to low-fat diets…it’s about commitment to a drug that makes you produce a nasty chocolate drizzle. After all, if you can commit to a low-fat diet, what the heck do you need Alli for?

And, yes, I find the minimalist, white graphic design of the packaging and the brochures offensive as well. This product, which in truth, makes you slightly ill by interfering with your ability to absorb fat, should be in a black box with big FDA warnings, or at least a very dark brown that matches the real value of Alli itself.

(Photo courtesy of J. Star, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)

OK, so I know that what you blog about is a more-or-less semi-permanent record of you. Plus, I have clients who read this blog. And I might be just a little more over the top than usual with this post, but there’s a real marketing problem with a new product and I think the marketer’s response to that problem is…uh…interesting.

Have you heard of Alli, the new over-the-counter medication for weight loss? It’s a low-dose version of orlistat, a drug that prevents the absorption of fat. That can lead to weight loss for those taking the drug.

The problem with orlistat is that fat that doesn’t get absorbed…it…uh…passes, if you know what I mean. This can potentially create an oily mess.

Imagine being the marketing people for Alli: you want to sell this thing in big, big numbers, but it has this indelicate side effect. And you have to disclose it.

What’s the solution? To them it must have seemed easy: make a helpful recommendation about how to deal with the heartbreak of panty-rear oily streaks.

On www.myalli.com, there’s a “treatment effects” page with this chirpy sounding suggestion for working people on Alli:

Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

Now, I have to tell you that any product that pretty much insures users will need to cover up the product’s nasty effects with dark clothes or even keep a supply of adult diapers nearby has a serious marketing problem. And this kind of copy makes it even worse.

Anybody who reads about Alli in the newspaper or looks at the packaging is sure to hear about this side-effect. Why make it worse with a “helpful” suggestion? Isn’t Alli targeted at adults, who presumably know what the implications of this side effect are?

To my ears, this over-the-top effort to be helpful backfires, and does so badly. Far from being useful, it just simply makes the product sound so revolting that I suspect millions will be put off.

This is a simple case of the marketing people just saying too much and overreaching to be “helpful”.