RightSize (smoothies) free trial – A Marketing Review

Just a few minutes ago, I saw a commercial for the RightSize Health & Nutrition company.  Apparently the company ran a free promotion for a trail weight loss smoothie (or so it claims in the commercial), but because of such a high demand, the company ran out of products!

Wow!

Fortunately, and this is a big relief, they have more smoothies in stock, and if we act now (I’m talking about ordering NOW, not sitting around and thinking about it for a while), then we can take advantage of the trial offer again.  This is only a limited time only and they supposedly ran out of products before, so it’s time to go online and order the free trial.

This must have been a big deal since the CEO or somebody important in the company came out and apologized to us for running out of smoothies last time.  All we have to do is go online and order the free trial, only having to pay shipping and handling.  <cough>$18.71<cough>

Does that sound awesome or what?

The problem is that when we take a look at the website and the “free” trial, well, let’s hope you haven’t already hit the spending limit on your credit card.  In other words —– potential SCAM alert!As far as the actual TV commercial (I caught it on the WGN channel a few minutes before midnight), there were several warning signs right off the start.

It’s common for less-than-ethical companies to have commercials that feature bright backgrounds, somebody speaking loudly, and an offer too good to be true.

This commercial hit all three and more.

For starters, somebody supposedly high ranking in the company starred in the commercial.  He first wanted to make an apology to all of us people.  As he stated, his company actually ran out of products last time they did the free trial, and not everybody was able to participate.  Well, they have more in stock, so the free trials have resumed.  Hooray!

As cheesy as the set-up sounds, I will give it credit for trying to create a demand, whether or not that actually happened.  I have never heard of said company before, so this was all new to me.  If they actually ran out of products last time they did a promotion, well, that’s anybody’s guess.

I don’t remember the exact details of the rest of the commercial, but the spokesman basically went on telling us briefly about the company’s smoothies and how they do such a great job helping people lose weight.  But what happened next was a dead giveaway that the commercial was nothing but a lame marketing stunt.

The spokesman told us that we only had until midnight to take advantage of the free trial offer.  It’s presumed that the free trial will have another surge in demand, and if we don’t order it that day (right then as they would prefer), then they’ll be out of stock again.

I can’t help but be amused by the timing of this commercial and the spokesman’s comments.  This was the WGN channel out of Chicago, and sure enough, it aired at 11:57 pm cst.  If that was in fact true, then we only had a three minute window to order the free trial.  Yeah, right.  They could have at least put a phony countdown timer on the screen and claimed that we only had a few minutes to place our order.

In a nutshell, that was the commercial.  All flash, big promises, a deal too good to be true, and something supposedly offered for a very limited time only.  Whenever you see such advertisements, be very suspicious and read the fine print.  The company’s website tells us all we need to know.

Let’s take a look at the website for the free trial.

As we can see, except for the order form to enter our information, there is no actual text on the screen.  All of the content is actually composed of two separate images.

I’m always skeptical whenever I see landing pages composed of images instead of text.  This is extremely bad when it comes to SEO.  No search engine in the world is going to transform the text on an image into real text on the screen.  It’s technically not wrong to make a website in this style, but if you’re presenting yourself as a real company, you would never use this technique.  It’s not hard to use tables to create a neatly organized website with both text and graphics.

On the page, notice how the term “Appemine” is used several times, as if it’s a real scientific term.  Well, it’s not.  It’s a trademarked term by RightSize and something that the company either created in the chemistry lab or bought it from somebody else.  It hasn’t been cleared by the FDA “for human or veterinary use at this time.”

It is entertaining how on this landing page the term “all-natural” is hyphenated one time, but stated as two separate words another time.  Graphic programs usually don’t include a grammar checker.

It’s also entertaining how the landing page states that “Appemine” is only available in RightSize products.  Again, this is because “Appemine” is a registered trademark by RightSize Health & Nutrition Crop.  No other diet product will ever use that term to market their products without paying RightSize a licensing fee.

The landing page goes as far as offering us a pdf file from The New England Journal of Medicine giving us some basic diet information.  This is mostly for show as the entire pdf file is over ten pages long and full of charts and technical jargon meaningless to the average person.  Having the pdf file is a weak attempt to establish credibility in the RightSize diet smoothie, as if it was actually studied by the NEJM.  Oddly enough, the pdf file states that the document is “For personal use only.”  I wonder if RightSize received permission to use it on its sales page?

My favorite part of the landing page is the company’s philosophy.  As it states, “We believe you MUST burn more calories than you consume to lose weight.”

Really?

You mean to tell me that you actually have to burn more calories than you consume if you want to lose weight?

Shit!

So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong for all of these years!

I’m glad that somebody out there finally pointed me in the right direction.  How many nutrition classes did it take to figure out that statement on dieting?

Using that philosophy, I’m willing to bet that if I start spending less than what I’m making, then the money in my bank account will actually grow and I won’t go into debt!  That’s the same thing as getting a raise, right?

Breaking away from the sarcasm and entering basic information into the order form (for informational purposes only), page two offers more real information about the company.

A brief infomercial for RightSize.

On page two, we can see that this time the page uses a combination of text and graphics, with most of the text on the screen as part of the image file.  Oddly enough, this page gives us two disclaimers — one for the company (including how the FDA hasn’t approved of this for use on humans or animals), and one for the 14-day trial.  We’ll touch on that subject in just a minute.

As we can see, sure enough, ordering the free trial right now is free.  We just have to pay $18.71 to ship two cans of the smoothie material to our homes.

The key things with the free trail are that it comes with two cans (do NOT open that second can unless you want to continue the product), and that you only have a 14-day period before canceling the subscription for the smoothies.

As it’s stated, if we don’t cancel the trail within those 14 days after receiving the product, then we’ll be hit with an immediate payment of $119.80 on the ol’ credit card.  It’s stated specifically that we are not to open that second can unless we’re satisfied with the product.  Otherwise, it will have to be mailed back to the company at our expense.  We can only assume that opening that second can means authorizing the company to charge the large fee to the credit card.

The key thing here is time.  The longer it takes to receive the “free” product, the more likely that you’re going to forget about the 14-day time limit and avoiding the $119.80 charge.  My friends, this is all by design.  Be extremely careful when companies offer free trials of products but still require credit card information.

The order form also offers joining the membership program and supposedly saving money on future shipments.  Unless the subscription is canceled, we’ll be billed $49.90 and then again every 30 days until you’ve lost enough weight and want to cancel the program.  When you consider that the regular price of the smoothie mixes on the company’s website are $54.80 each (all of them receiving five-star reviews by the “customers”.  Amazing!), signing up for the program along with the trial offer actually sounds like a good idea if you go for that sort of thing.

Again, the key thing here is time.  It’s mentioned that we won’t receive the first discounted can of smoothie mix until around 60 days, the same time frame when they hit the credit card with payment of $49.90.

I honestly don’t know if this is a good price or not for a diet drink.  I don’t use those products and have no intention of using any in the near future.  This is a marketing and website review, not a product review.

What I do know is that the cheesy TV commercial for this promotion sounds like a scam, and the poorly constructed website and high costs add to the evidence.  This company is severely lacking credibility and the establishment of it being a respected and trustworthy company.  There are even typos on the Terms & Conditions page, if you can believe that!

For a fun note, the BBB mentions that RightSize is actually based about ten minutes away from me in Alpharetta, GA.

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RIGHTSIZE and APPEMINE are both registered trademarks of RightSize Health & Nutrition Corp (written as “RightSize & Health Nutrition Corp” in the disclaimer — ANOTHER grammar error!) and were used without permission.