NutriSystem lures men with pizza, sex

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Nate Griffin, a former Army sergeant, watches what he eats. He's even tried juice diets to shed pounds. But ask him if he'd join a group to talk about weight loss and he cringes.

"To talk about a diet means you're really weak in a certain area," said Griffin, a personal trainer in a Philadelphia suburb. "It's like saying 'I need this group to help me beat that."'

 

A new advertising campaign is taking a different approach, focusing instead on sports metaphors, confidence and -- sometimes -- sex.

"Since NutriSystem, my sex life is excellent," a male dieter says in one testimonial that claims a loss of 62 pounds.

 

The new campaign by NutriSystem Inc. was designed to appeal to men who want to lose weight but who don't like groups, counting calories or laborious food preparations. After many focus groups, the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company realized guys required a different approach.

The company dangles this lure: They can eat pizza, burgers and pasta. NutriSystem's portion-controlled meals are microwavable. There are no group meetings and they can diet at home, privately.

"Seventy million people are on a diet -- 20 million are men," said Djordje "George" Jankovic, NutriSystem's president and chief operating officer. "It's a huge market."

 

Founded in 1972, NutriSystem operated mainly as weight-loss centers offering packaged meals. After a bankruptcy in 1993 and management and ownership changes, a new team put the company on its own diet, closing centers and moving into direct sales to consumers, with updated packaging, improved food and aggressive marketing.

 

Its new pitch is to offer free support for customers who pay for the food, and it is planning to target seniors soon, too, by offering foods infused with more vitamins as well as gingko biloba and green tea.

 

NutriSystem still faces an uphill battle for market share, though. It wasn't named by dieters in an October survey by NPD Group, a market research firm, because other programs or eating plans had more participants.

A report last year on diet programs by Consumer Reports, which didn't include NutriSystem, gave Weight Watchers the highest marks. This month, EDiets.com Inc. kicked off a premium food delivery service called FreshCuisine. And Jenny Craig Inc. began its own meal delivery service last year.