Resolutions spell profit for some companies
New Year’s resolutions aren’t just big dreams – they’re big business.
They’ve swelled into a multibillion-dollar industry for companies that promise to help people kick bad habits or improve their lives. For every New Year’s resolution, there’s a gaggle of companies out trying to make a buck – if not megabucks.
It’s no accident that starting today the media will be filled with ads that brashly promote surefire ways to stop smoking, lose weight or get fit. This is what many Americans want most of all in the New Year: to be better. And some are spending vast amounts to accomplish that – with the least amount of effort possible.
“The human race has a wired-in desire to make life better,” says Dr. Joyce Brothers, the psychologist. “Advertisers know the New Year is the best time to poke and prod because consumers are motivated like no other time of the year.”
The top five New Year’s resolutions (as ranked by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion) are: stop smoking; get a grip financially; lose weight; exercise more; and get a new job.
The Marist College poll found that women are more likely to have made 2005 resolutions than are men, at 39 percent of women vs. 32 percent of men, says poll director Lee Miringoff. The top resolution for men is to quit smoking; tops for women is to lose weight.
Familiar companies that provide services to help consumers reach their goals are gearing up for marketing blitzes.
GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Nicorette smoking cessation nicotine gum, will post ads on ashtrays outside restaurants in selected cities coast to coast that forbid smoking in public places. The company will spend more than 50 percent of its marketing budget in the four months that started with November and end with February.
It’s no accident that January is the month that Weight Watchers sends its royal weight-watcher, The Duchess of York, on tour coast-to-coast. More than 30 percent of Weight Watchers’ new membership comes in the first quarter of the year.
That’s also when the company spends 35 percent of its yearly marketing budget. Among the promotions this January, a blitz of 7 million pieces of membership-seeking mail.
But nothing will get more media attention than the duchess’s 10-city tour from New York to Los Angeles. She’ll meet and greet. And, for the ninth year, she’ll get the company oodles of free PR.
Finally, Monster.com every January pulls out all the stops to attract the attention of job seekers in an effort to get them to post their resumes on the company’s online jobs board.