Gen-Z, Millennial Momvertising Opps: Jenny Craig taps media AOR, CEO after CMO shift (Score 73)

After appointing CMO Gadi BenMark a year ago, weight management company Jenny Craig (JC) named Horizon Media's Horizon Next as TV media AOR, effective September. JC leaders started to look for innovative ways to succeed the global pandemic's "new normal"; hopefully Horizon Next will accelerate the company's growth in these trying times. JC needs an agency partner that relies on data-driven insight, advanced analytics and a unique buying strategy. This shift replaces incumbent media partner Generator Media + Analytics.

In January 2020, the company tapped David Pastrana as CEO. Pastrana previously served as White House Black Market's president, leading the $700m brand's turnaround via brand positioning, customer data and the design of an innovative digital store concept. 

JC offers a variety of health-oriented services despite the global pandemic, whether customers want to lose weight with its plan or access convenient healthy meals with its new affordable online food plan options, free delivery and personal coaching by phone.

According to iSpot, JC stopped investing in national TV in late March 2020 and returned in September 2020. While this could be related to the coronavirus, it is also a common spending pattern for this company to follow. So far, this year's commercials targeted female millennials and Gen-Z with top targeted shows such as The Ingraham Angle, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Chicago P.D., Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds. A YTD spend of approximately $14.6m has reached nearly half of the approximately $30.7m spent in the same 2019 timeframe; JC's full 2019 spend dropped by 27% to around $32.2m from around $43.9m in 2018.

Similarly, the company stopped utilizing digital display for the most part in April 2020 and returned to the channel in September 2020; Adbeat estimates it allocated $2m toward this channel from September 2019-2020, nearly flat from the estimated $2.1m allocated from September 2018-2019. Most of the past year's spend went toward programmatic ads placed via Google DV360 ($1.8m) onto sites such as rawstory.com ($78.5k), esp.com, zerohedge.com, thehill.com and mediaite.com.

Additionally, Magellan reports JC aired 15 podcast ads within the past year.

The company's national TV commercials target millennial and Gen-X, but its more consistent digital display ads signal a target demographic of Gen-Z and millennial women, particularly moms. Remember JC offers diet plans and D2C meals and has retail locations. Kantar data reports the company also utilizes local broadcast. Spend will likely spike in Q1-Q2, peak weight loss season.

Agency & martech readers - Reviews often follow one another, especially around this long after a CMO shift, so get in touch soon for potential creative work, which is currently handled by LRXD.