Don’t bring a lawyer to a publicity fight

Personally I’d never heard of Jenny Craig until this week – apparently the weight loss company is a player in the $40billion US diet industry – and one that’s  about to get bigger, thanks to the publicity the market leader, Weight Watchers is handing it by way of a lawsuit.

The employment of lawyers to fight publicity battles is almost always a bad move. You wouldn’t ask a PR agent to defend you in court, why employ a lawyer to handle publicity? Tiger Woods did it recently and that’s turning out well isn’t it.

Even if the Jenny Craig claims are deemed misleading in court, dieters won’t care really, it’s mere semantics, they’ll give it a go anyway and in far higher numbers than if Weight Watchers hadn’t drawn attention to them in the first place.

If you look at the offending ad below, Weight Watchers isn’t even mentioned, they say only ‘the largest weight loss program.’ Now everyone knows exactly which brand is allegedly half as good as Jenny Craig while before it was oblique.

The smart thing would have been to come back fighting with a campaign of their own, without assisting their rival by naming them.