Weight Watchers changes name to WW because "dieting" becomes more taboo

Weight Watchers will now call it "WW". The 55-year-old company has just announced that it is re-branding itself to focus more on overall health. Its new slogan: "Well-being that works"

This is a change that the company has put in place since 2015. Oprah Winfrey came as an investor when Weight Watchers was in decline and announced that she had lost a lot of weight on the program while still eating from bread every day. The fortunes of the company have improved since then, but they bring back $ 2 billion in revenue, according to Fortune, a goal that has been in sight for almost a decade, but has not yet been achieved.

It is not surprising that Weight Watchers is distancing itself from diets. We are in a moment where the concepts of well-being and personal care have become essential. Openly talking about diet becomes a taboo and the positivity movement of the body is on the rise. Weight Watchers has had to change to stay relevant, and there has been more and more talk of wellness and healthy living in recent years. Tellingly, in a March New York Times column, decrying the company's plan to offer free subscriptions to teenagers only 13, Jennifer Weiner wrote: "You could almost believe that society was preparing to change name. self-esteem and healthy lifestyle.

But are Weight Watchers and our diet culture really evolving? Not really. Whatever its name, WW is primarily a company that wants to help you lose weight in a society that focuses on weight loss. All the rest is only marketing.

What does the new WW look like

Weight Watchers was founded in 1963 by a Queens housewife named Jean Nidetch. She struggled to bear her weight and went to an obesity clinic at over 200 pounds. According to her obituary, she has hidden cookies in her basket to eat late at night. Then, the story goes that she invited several of her overweight friends to a compassionate session, which resulted in a pact to try to lose weight together. Nidetch lost more than 60 pounds and Weight Watchers was born.

Historically, members have gone to weekly support meetings for conferences and weighing. This still exists, but there is also an application that does not require attending IRL meetings.

Weight Watchers costs around $ 3 a week to become a digital member; $ 7 for a studio subscription, which includes in-person meetings; and about $ 13 for "digital plus personal coaching" membership, including custom sessions on behavior management and food planning. (Disclosure: I have been a paid digital member of Weight Watchers for several years.)

Weight Watchers has always been, at the base, a company that asks members to record their food consumption. Over the years, he has used different methods to value foods, beyond calories. He assigns point values ​​to the food, then assigns each person a total of points that he is allowed to consume each day.

This proprietary point system changes dramatically every two or three years. The most recent iteration, called Freestyle, allows users to get as few daily points as possible, but it also created a whole series of products that were "expensive" and worthless. For example, beans and bananas had relatively high point values ​​because they were high in calories. But they are also healthy foods, so that they can now be eaten with abandon without "cost" for the weight supervisor.

Some members did not like this new version. Someone even launched a Change.org petition to bring back the previous version of the points; he gathered 3,600 signatures. They argued that the scheme was actually more restrictive because members were losing a significant portion of their per diem and new zero point foods were very high in protein (such as eggs and chicken).

The fact that the point system changes often partly reflects a new understanding of the science of food, at least according to Weight Watchers, but primarily reflects the company's attitude towards the plans and the needs of shareholders from Weight Watchers. As it becomes clearer, diets do not work. Weight Watchers has slowly changed its policies to focus more on a trip than on a destination, which is less rigorously prescribed.

Earlier this year, Weight Watchers announced that it would no longer use the proven advertising method of pre-post advertising in its advertisements, in the blink of an eye to the movement of body positivity. But at the same time that she announced this initiative, she went into trouble by also proclaiming that she would offer free memberships to teenagers. There have been negative reactions, opponents arguing that it would be bad for the body image of adolescents and indoctrinate early in the culture of dieting. "The name is Weight Watchers, not Health Enhancers. As soon as the focus is on weight, the potential for damage to the mind and body begins, "writes Rebecca Scritchfield in the Washington Post.. Now, of course, society says it Is want to be on the improvement of health.

One way to do this is to access its strong community of users. In addition to food registration, the other pillar of the Weight Watchers lexicon is the community. Weekly meetings in person and weighing were a requirement. These still exist, but they will now be called Wellness Workshops. Although there are 31,000 weekly meetings in person, according to Fortune, a lot of the community has moved online.

Connect, the company's social media platform, is an integral part of the experience. it's a virgin online space where serious posters support each other. It's very similar to Twitter, in that it has a global timeline that keeps updating, although you can comment on articles in a way that is very similar to Facebook. You can choose to follow members and see their publications in a separate calendar. WW will add targeted areas within Connect, where people with similar interests, such as not eating gluten or vegan, for example, can "get together".

In order for users to be able to use and pay for services longer, new incentive programs called "WellnessWins" launch, rewarding people and offering them experiences to achieve certain goals. Fortune notes that this is an attempt to get men to join them, who probably love prices and be competitive. Currently, 10% of Weight Watchers members are men. DJ Khaled and filmmaker Kevin Smith are engaged as spokespersons this year.

Thaddaeus McAdams / Getty / WireImage

Finally, Weight Watchers also sells tangible products beyond a mere promise of weight loss, such as food, food storage containers, food preparation utensils and cookbooks. Its foods and snacks will be reformulated to no longer contain artificial sweeteners, flavors, colorants or preservatives. Careful scrutiny of ingredients is an important part of wellness consumerism, and if you sell products that are not perceived as "natural", that's a problem for a brand.

Why did Weight Watchers abandon the diet (even if it's not really ditching)

The positivity movement of the body is slowly gaining speed. Consumers have been pushing clothing brands to offer extensive sizing, and a self-acceptance mantra is beginning to invade the Internet, even though it is still far from universal (besides brands have co-opted the concept to sell products). ). All of this means that plans are no longer necessarily perceived as fees or acceptable. But this is only semantics.

"People were fasting, eating clean and cleaning and changing their lifestyle, which, according to all the available evidence, is exactly like a diet," writes Taffy Brodesser-Akner in a New York Times article published in August 2017 "Health is the new lean," Mindy Grossman, CEO of Weight Watchers, told Fortune.

WW is still, unsurprisingly, mainly focused on weight loss. Like the beauty industry that wants to stop selling you anti-aging products without ever mentioning the word "aging," WW nonetheless wants to help users lose weight. While browsing its website (still on weightwatchers.com), you are greeted with a large blue banner and an explanation of the name change. "We will still be the world leader in weight loss, but now, WW welcomes everyone who wants to develop healthy habits – that it means eating better, moving more, developing a positive state of mind, focusing on weight … or all the above! "

A quick browse in Connect today shows that, as is usually the case when Weight Watchers changes something, users have mixed feelings about it.

"I think it's a terrible idea. Of course, focus on healthy habits, but people adhere because they want to lose weight. Concentrate on your target audience, "wrote one of these.

"So excited by this change! I was hoping for something like that when they would come out with free style. "Focusing on health is so much more sustainable than just cutting calories and focusing solely on weight loss," wrote another.

The blue logo with the two letters stacked on each of them is now familiar to users of the application of the company. But "double-do you double" does not exactly roll the tongue. Will the company try to reduce that to something like "Two Dubs" or "Double Dub"? Wait a few more quarters to find out.

Or, as one member wrote in Connect: "For me, it's like when Kentucky Fried Chicken has changed its name to KFC. This will always be the old name for most of us forever.

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