ASIA-PACIFIC – SHANGHAI, CHINA, DECEMBER 12, 2011: RAPP China has completed a rich and insightful RAPP CULTURA report for Weight Watchers in China that has helped put Weight Watchers on a strong footing for its brand and business planning ahead for 2012. This is the second CULTURA project RAPP China has completed after the first project conducted in December 2010 for Unilever.
CULTURA is RAPP’s proprietary methodology in delivering insights from combining primary and secondary research, cultural insight and social media analytics to build a comprehensive report to unify consumers’ perception, behavior and insights that correspond to pre-defined key business drivers/ questions in a meaningful way.
RAPP China, in collaboration with DDB China Group Planning’s capabilities, dug deep to unearth strong insights to clearly map out and show understanding of Weight Watchers based on the 3C framework – Consumers & Culture, Company & Brand and Category & Competition.
For the Weight Watchers report, primary sources that RAPP China championed included social media listening, internal surveys of 92 interviewees from local management and global leaders, competitive research and deep brand immersion of two months’ shadowing and participating as actual Weight Watchers’ members. Secondary sources came from client’s qualitative and quantitative research reports by independent third-party research agencies.
Key findings include:
-Growing concerns about health and obesity amongst Chinese consumers, due to health food scares and the increase in obesity rate in China by 97% in 10 years from 1992 to 2002
-The lack of proper weight loss knowledge overall, which consumers tend to go for fixes and fads that do not work in the long run with multiple bad experiences
-Gap in proper education and credible and proven method to adopt a healthy and sustainable weight loss and how Weight Watchers is best positioned for this
"CULTURA, along with our other China specific products such as RAPP Predictor, is positively impacting our clients’ businesses here in Greater China and gaining strong demand from both clients and prospects. In Weight Watchers we have a great partner who recognises and cherishes the value of data-driven marketing and let us do what we do best for them", said Ross Gearing, Vice President RAPP Greater China.
“The RAPP and DDB team has been absolutely superb. It’s a pleasure to have them working with us on Weight Watchers and developing the CULTURA Report that is so data-rich and well captured and analyzed, almost like our own marketing bible. We look forward to winning consumer’s heart and mind in the marketplace together with the team”, added Elizabeth Egan, General Manager, Weight Watchers China.
