What Québec Wants™

Nutrition Inc. - Under the influence of Christine Avanti and Isabelle Huot.

Meet celebrity nutritionist Christine Avanti.

She’s everywhere - including a show on the Food Network and a book titled “SKINNY CHICKS EAT REAL FOOD”.

She’s quintessential Hollywood.

Her profile states that she is a classically trained French chef, Certified Nutritionist, Media Spokesperson, TV Persona and Co-Host on Food Network’s show Fat Chef. She has been Hollywood’s go-to nutrition/culinary expert for celebrities such as Jeremy Piven, Audrina Patridge, Giuliana Rancic, Johnny Galecki, Paula Abdul, Rich Sommer, Jason Statham, Samantha Harris, Chelsea Handler, Henry Winkler, Kym Johnson, Steven Segal and Marcus Allen. Christine has counseled more than a thousand clients one-on-one in her private nutrition and fitness coaching practice located in New York City and Los Angeles, who have collectively lost more than 10,000 pounds.

Christine has shared her nutrition and culinary advice on the Today Show, Dancing with the Stars, Rachael Ray, The Doctors, Good Morning America, Oprah’s All Stars and dozens of others. Her insights can be found in magazines such as Vogue, W, New Beauty, Women’s Health, US Weekly, Health, Fitness, InStyle and many others. 

 She also recently endorsed The Skinny Vine launched in the US in January by Treasury Wine Estates, the Australian company behind Penfolds, Lindeman’s and Rosemount Estate. Yes. It’s wine for the calorie conscious.

According to an article by Peppi Crosariol in the Globe and Mail:

The Skinny Vine has shipments already exceeding 100,000 cases, the three wines – Slim Chardonnay, Thin Zin and Mini Moscato – weigh in at just 7.3– to 8.5-per-cent alcohol and 86 to 95 calories per five-ounce glass. That compares with an average of between 120 and 141 calories for comparable varietals made in California.

 

As expected, Christine’s visibility is enhanced by her extensive use of social networks. The day Peppi wrote about her endorsement of The Skinny Vine in the Globe, Christine tweeted “Got a great #shoutout today in The Globe! Many Thx @Beppi_Crosariol.

And on it goes...

 

Meet Dr. Isabelle Huot - Québec's version of Christine Avanti.

They share looks, a knack for getting exposure and a very smart business sense.

Isabelle Huot holds a PhD in Nutrition. One would think she also holds one in marketing with a specialty in personal branding.

I met her several years ago when she was a nutrition advisor for one of our clients and later became a spokesperson. Back then, she already had a binder full of press clippings to impress me during contract negotiations. There’s clearly no need for that binder anymore.

She is a successful entrepreneur who knows the importance of carefully cultivating her brand and generating visibility. The woman is everywhere in Québec.

She's on television. She is a regular contributor to TVA’s Salut Bonjour morning show. Québec’s version of The Today Show.

Salut Bonjour - TVA's morning show

She's in book stores. She has published six books with Les Éditions de l’homme (a division of Québecor Média)

One of six books published by Dr. Isabelle Huot

She's in advertising. She is the spokesperson for Québec commercial bakery St-Méthode. She appears in television advertising and her conseilsnutrition.tv advice is available via the bakery’s website.

 

She's on the web - in every way. Her ConseilsNutrition.tv website is classic content integration connecting the dots between the books, recipes, and online videos. It links to her website which goes a step further with a link to Kilo Solution, her nutrition and weight loss clinics.

Nutritional advice via web videos and other content

She's on cruise ships. Meet the doctor aboard a Royal Caribberan cruise ship. She’ll deliver conference themed “Nutrition at the heart of health”.

An invitation to hear her talk about nutrition while cruising the Caribbean

She’s on TVA’s Shopping Channel. Where she sells her line of food as part of her weight loss program.

 

She's on the radio. She has a regular segment on Rythme 105.7 FM in Montreal.

A radio commentator

She's in newspapers. She has a weekly column in Le Journal de Montréal (another Québecor Media property) where she delivers advice and she pitches her line of food. Why not treat promotion as news, if you can?

A weekly column

"News' reports

Or she reviews and recommends food products. Why not use that influence, if you can? 

Reviewing and recommending products

She's in magazines. She is regularly featured on magazine covers.

Celebrity treatment on magazine covers

She’s on Twitter and Facebook. And she’s active. 

Twitter & Facebook to engage and extend her reach

What’s missing?

Wine. I bet it won’t take long for the über nutritionist to start pitching it.

Cheers to that.

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Here's a related findings from our What Québec Wants syndicated study:

Agreement with the statement "I am confused about how to eat a healthy diet": 35% of French Quebeckers compared to 25% of Canadians in the rest of the country.

Dr. Huot still has her work cut out.

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MacLac #2

As I predicted in my post yesterday, Maclean's sister publication in Québec will put an angry Bonhomme on the front cover of its next issue.

Québec City's Le Soleil confirms it today in an article by Frédéric Denoncourt. Here's the illustration by Le Soleil's cartoonist André-Philippe Côté.

L'Actualité's Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Carole Beaulieu is quoted in the Le Soleil article saying that most Quebeckers do not subscribe to Maclean's. Therefore, they are canceling their subscription to her magazine instead to punish Rogers. She adds that her magazine's story will not follow Maclean's editorial approach - a technique she says has worked because Maclean's increased its sales.

I'm sure she won't. But I also expect that the buzz the next issue of L'Actualité will create will not only undo whatever damage the Maclean's piece caused to L'Actualité, it will also increase sales (at least temporarily).

Whoever thought of this MacLac strategy is a genius.

MacLac

The folks at Rogers Publishing call it MacLac. The term was coined to refer to the publisher’s two current affairs magazines Maclean’s and L’Actualité. While the two magazines have little in common, they’re sometimes promoted together to advertisers running ad campaigns in English and French.

It now looks like MacLac is about to pay great dividends for Rogers Publishing in another way. Here’s the strategy:

• Maclean’s publishes a controversial story about Québec being the most corrupt province in Canada. The cover image of Bonhomme ensures that the story doesn’t go unnoticed and gets reproduced in newspapers and online.
• Politicians of every stripe and the media keep the story going. Copies of Maclean’s fly off the shelf in Québec.
• (September 27) Carole Beaulieu, the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of L’Actualité, publishes a “reaction” on her magazine’s website.
• (September 30) Jean-François Lisée, a regular contributor to the magazine, publishes a blog post (in English) on L’Actualité’s website entitled “Bonhomme strikes back”.
• (September 30) Rogers Publishing issues a press release to comment. The release states that “Québec is an important market for the company and we look forward to participating in the dynamic growth of the province and its citizens."

That’s what we know so far about the MacLac strategy currently being implemented.

Here’s what we should expect next if everything goes according to plan.

• L’Actualité will publish an extensive story on the corruption/bonhomme story in its next issue. The cover image will likely also use Bonhomme in some way (albeit in a more respectful way). The illustration by André-Philippe Côté accompanying J-F Lisée’s piece online might be the one. More media coverage will ensue.

That’ll keep us chatting for a while longer about corruption. Most of all, it will have taken the MacLac strategy to a whole new level.

You can’t buy that kind of visibility.