Hungry Girl On Brand Building

Author: Meghan Casserly

Lisa Lillien, the online low-cal guru, says she follows her gut: ''If I wasn't Hungry Girl, then I would be the No. 1 fan.''

Lisa Lillien, aka Hungry Girl, can't get enough Fiber One cereal. She's been using it as a fake "fried" topping on her recipes for years, including in her New York Times bestselling 200 Under 200 Calories cookbook. But it wasn't until recently that Fiber One began loving her back.

This summer General Mills ( GIS - news - people ) added Lillien's cartoon likeness--a mixture of Jane Jetson and Scooby Doo's Daphne--on the packaging of the new Yoplait Fiber One yogurt. It's her official stamp of approval, and the most recent of many "Hungry Girl Approved" products on grocery shelves, including Tofu Shirataki noodles and VitaTops muffin tops.

Lillien's online phenom, Hungry Girl, began in 2004 as a DIY operation; a way to share her passion for low-cal cooking and a know-it-all attitude on snacking. She had previously worked in online development for both Warner Brothers and Nickelodeon.

Her daily e-mails--one recipe focusing on swaps, or switching higher calorie and fatty ingredients for healthier alternatives--began with a mere 100 subscribers, mostly friends and friends of friends. The list inches closer to a million subscribers each day, putting Hungry Girl well on its way to becoming a major power player in the female-dominated diet market.

We talked shop--and steered clear of diet strategies--to get to the bottom of Lisa Lillien's recipe for success.

ForbesWoman: How did Hungry Girl get its start?

Lisa Lillien: I had lost 30 pounds and had the idea to launch a brand in the food and diet space from a regular person's perspective. Not from a dietitian, nutritionist or a medical professional--just from me. I love to write, I love food and I'm definitely the kind of person who loves to give advice.

And the clever name?

I love the name Hungry Girl. It just popped into my head, and I said to myself, "You really need to do this."

Why did you launch your brand online?

I thought it would be easy for me, it wouldn't be expensive to create and if it was compelling and the content was great, people would forward it to their friends and I could build traction that way.

When I started, I hired one person. We e-mailed everyone we knew and said, "This is what is happening: Hungry Girl is going to be this and this, and if it's interesting to you, sign up--but only if it's interesting." From day one, I wanted that list to be pure, filled with people who really liked the content.

What was the reaction?

We started getting new subscribers every day. At first it was nine subscribers, and then 20 a day and then 30, 50. The more people we had on the list, the more people were seeing it and subscribing every day.

Today it's not uncommon to get 1,000 new subscribers in a single day; the growth has been incredible. We're at 825,000 subscribers, over 90,000 Facebook fans and over 27,000 Twitter followers. I'm very proud that it has grown entirely organically, in a very real way.

Organic as opposed to what?

I think a mistake that people make when they launch newsletters or Web business is that they want to just get people on the list. They buy names or e-mail addresses, they get subscribers in an artificial way and then the audience isn't that interested in the brand.

The reason why we've seen success is that we only grew the list through word of mouth, from people reading the e-mail and sending it to their friends.

What about your advertising strategy?

Zero. None. That's crazy, I know, and that's what I think is so amazing. I started the company with maybe $10,000 or $15,000, and I used that money to create the logo and build the back-end. I was lucky because I'm a writer, so the content was just me--and free.

Any PR or press we've received has been by word of mouth. I started doing TV appearances as the brand grew, and once we had about 50,000 readers, producers started approaching me to come onto different shows. A lot of times I'll hear from publicists or TV producers or magazine editors who say, "I love your emails, I've been reading them forever. Can you be on our show or can I profile you for the magazine?" and more often than not she's a Hungry Girl fan.