At a Glance
Marketer: Herbalife International Inc.
Budget: Around $150,000 (test), national budget TBD
Media: DRTV
Form: 60-, 120-second spots
Agency: In Clover Marketing LLC, Los Angeles
Herbalife International Inc. has returned to television after a 10-year absence. An initial two-week reintroduction launched June 9 in six test markets was valued by company representatives at $75,000.
On July 7, the firm expanded from six to 10 markets and bought a second, comparable schedule for its 60- and 120-second spots. The health and beauty products company will evaluate whether to expand the effort nationally by the end of the summer.
The campaign consists of two spots with English and Spanish versions. One promotes Total Control, a dietary supplement. The other offers free samples for several products, and is designed to generate prospects for Herbalife’s million-person network of distributors, roughly 25% of which are based in the United States.
Why has the Los Angeles firm chosen to go back into television now? One reason is that the recent focus on American obesity has created a more receptive market, said Elisabeth Charles, senior vice president for global corporate marketing.
Additionally, the company’s new CEO, Michael O. Johnson, joined Herbalife from the Walt Disney Corp. in April. While serving as president of Walt Disney International, Johnson had a firm belief in the power of television, Charles said.
Not only hadn’t the company done any direct response television in recent years, it also hadn’t run any corporate advertising whatsoever, according to Charles. Instead, Herbalife relied on direct mail, telephone directory advertising and fliers created and issued by its sales force.
The new TV test was conducted entirely within local broadcast stations, but plans call for the expanded schedule to include broadcast cable and national outlets. While the buy was limited, it was enough to give Herbalife a sense of what worked and what didn’t.
“We made sure that our buy was enough that we could read it, but not enough that we were spending millions of dollars,” Charles said.
Charles added that the initial test run generated several thousand inquiries, and that while the company had not hit an ideal goal of $3 per lead, it was well on the way to reducing its cost to that level. But the real proof of the campaign’s success will be in the conversion rate. At deadline, Herbalife was still working on that analysis.
Given that two-thirds of its customers are women, the firm will continue buying time on female-oriented shows. The tests showed that the ads pulled well regardless of their time slot.
Herbalife doesn’t see the spots as competing with its agents. The ads offer a mixture of image advertising and lead generation. They do feature an 800 number, but they urge viewers to contact their local distributor.
Distributors have the option of purchasing marketing materials that have the same feel as the television ads, as well as the ability to give out the same sampler kits the ads offer.
The Spanish-language ads are more than just dubbed copies of the English spots: They feature testimonials from Hispanic customers. The bilingual strategy is likely to become a permanent part of Herbalife’s marketing arsenal.
“The Spanish ads have had a tremendous response,” Charles said, adding that she made sure the back-end operations such as the call center were prepared to handle Spanish-speaking consumers.
Charles noted one difference between the responses to the Hispanic ads and the Anglo spots: The ads offering several product samples pulled considerably better among English-speaking prospects, whereas Hispanics responded equally well to the spot offering a magazine and one product sample.
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