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Mindy Grossman, CEO of the company we've known so far under the name Weight Watchers, had some good news to share last week with the firm's 18,000 employees. The 55-year-old company will change its name from Weight Watchers to WW, standing out from the idea of "weight loss" and the much more "momentary" of well-being.
"I can not tell you the enthusiasm, excitement, pride and passion of this team," Grossman told Quartz At Work. It's a goal-oriented business, she said, and the people who work there do not just have a job, they really care about it.
If everything seems a little complicated, the name change, announced to the world today (September 24), could also be seen as a redemptive gesture, an apology for the before-after photos that the company has used for years. years. , for the chemically laced foods she sold under her brand and for putting the word "weight" in front of our eyes for decades.
Of course, it is also a for-profit company, and this new brand image is also very relevant. Grossman hopes that by signaling the values of a progressive company, aware that the world is tired of rudeness, it will attract new customers and impress investors. The CEO, who has only 15 months in the management of the company, also tries to preserve part of its historic capital and keep the promise always lucrative of a flatter belly.
"We will never give up on our leadership in healthy, nutritious weight loss," Grossman said in a moment when he did not miss a thing. "We're just trying to give you the tools you need so that you can have healthy habits and make the right choices for a healthier life," she said.
It seems simple enough. But it will be a complicated transition.
A dose of moral signaling, hold on to cynicism
The Weight Watchers rebranding is the second sign in recent years that the sleeping giant has appeared, and it is no longer ready to let "well-being" brands like Goop get away with phrases like "loss of weight".
The first sign of resurgence appeared in 2015, when TV personality Oprah Winfrey took a 10% stake in the company, joined her board and agreed to be her ambassador. His arrival also indicated, no doubt, that Oprah's values of compassion and empathy were shared by the company. The stock price has surged, but has declined since.
There were also other small teams. In February, for example, Grossman announced that Weight Watchers would no longer use the words "before" and "after" in any of its documents. Even before this change, she told Quartz, only 70% of Weight Watchers' content mentioned food. The message to its 4.5 million members was that the company would sell a holistic approach to health, not an idealized weight.
It could be argued that the company's official name change was necessary to finally stifle the company's image and allow it to speak to the herds that grapple with the markets of Whole Foods and farmers. Notably, as of January 2019, WW food products will have more sweeteners, flavors, colorants, and artificial preservatives, also announced the company today.
In the trade press, Grossman is already recognized as the CEO Weight Watchers needed to rebuild itself completely. Before joining the weight loss company, she ran the Home Shopping Network, turning it into HSN, and turning a snoozy shopping channel into an e-commerce star.
As with its HSN brand change, it will involve a new integration with technology, reaching people where they are – upon receiving a Google Assistant or an Amazon Alexa, for example. Weight Watchers has been talking about mindfulness for at least ten years; now, his app will include messages from the main Headspace Meditation app.
His new WellnessWins program will reward people for the actions they undertake, such as doing exercise or attending WW meetings, says Grossman. In this way, it will be similar to Vitality, a life insurance program that allows a person to pay lower premiums and earn points while staying healthy. Both are based on hacking human behavior, using what we know about cognitive biases to encourage people to change their habits. Both will undoubtedly raise concerns about the amount of data members pass on to corporate interests.
Once again, the motives of the contaminated companies will be attributed to an effort announced as being good for consumers.
A public purpose
Let's assume, however, that Weight Watchers staff have a legitimate interest in the lives of their clients, even though shareholders do not.
To understand how this brand announcement may have been cathartic, just consider a few recent and powerful articles on the weight loss industry and attitudes towards obesity. Just a few days ago, Michael Hobbs wrote in a Huffington Post article about the contribution of the medical industry to ignorance by ignoring the medical evidence on metabolism and diets: "I'm n & # I've never written a story where They cried during the interviews, where they checked two and three times that I would not reveal their names, where they trembled with anger in describing their interactions with doctors and strangers and with their own families.
One interviewee told him about the children singing "Baby Beluga" on the school bus, another said never to let his partner see him stripped naked in a bright room. He spoke to a man who said that "a glimpse of himself in a mirror can destroy his mood for days."
This is exactly the kind of painful story that the Weight Watchers coaching staff would have heard, whether at community support meetings or in the workplace, as the company ran its program. Under the Weight Watchers brand, the name of the company would clearly put them in the camp of honesty, even though their message has long been that health and weight are not interchangeable concepts.
"Finally," said Stacie Sherer, the company's communications manager.
Anything else that WW wants to say about his new image, and all that one might think of motivations, the idea that employees are passionate and that they are Proud of their work seems plausible and deserves to be celebrated.
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