Diane Utzman-O'Neill, Medfast/Minnesota Weight Control Centers, Inc.
Title: Vice president of marketing
Age: 56
Diane Utzman-O'Neill, vice president of marketing for Medifast franchisee Minnesota Weight Control Centers Inc., is emphasizing wellness as a benefit of weight loss to help drive growth for the company, which operates eight locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Utzman-O'Neill said the company has focused its messaging on health and wellness, personal appearance and having clothes fit comfortably after research found that those were the leading benefits prospective women customers were seeking from weight loss.
The company's research also found that the ease of the Medifast program plus support from registered dietitians and nutritionists at each center resonated with women, said Utzman-O'Neill, whose responsibilities include brand strategy development and digital and customer relationship marketing.
Meeting with a Medifast consultant before her interview with the company helped her learn about the program, Utzman-O'Neill said. It also led to her losing weight she had struggled to drop despite a regular workout regimen. The consultant's counterintuitive advice — to eat more to offset her workouts — helped Utzman-O'Neill lose the weight and keep it off for more than a year.
A brand marketing veteran, Utzman-O'Neill joined the Medifast franchisee last year after holding executive and management positions at Simple Ear, Hearth and Home Technologies, Amplifon USA, Select Comfort, Andersen Corp., NordicTrack and Ford Motor Co. She has an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Q: How has research influenced your marketing work?
A: Researching consumer insights has always been a big piece of all of my jobs. That's why when I started at Medifast, we did that research to fine tune our communications and make sure we had the right strategy for our creative [people].
Q: How has your corporate experience benefited you at Medifast?
A: One thing I learned from Select Comfort is that the more testimonials — if you get actual clients who use the brand to talk about it — it's gold. That's one piece that we continue to do, having people talk about their [Medifast] success and how it's changed their lives.
Q: What has kept you in consumer brand marketing throughout your career?
A: It's awesome to know you're changing people's lives but yet you're helping the company grow in a profitable way. Learning from consumer insights those unique selling positions that you can bring out in your marketing, that's what's really exciting. If you do the research, try it and see results from it, that's powerful.
Todd Nelson
