Big brands slyly use insecurity in Trojan marketing tactics

Is it surprising that Weight Watchers are using women’s insecurities to sell memberships?

Women are predominantly marketed the product of happiness – the kind of happiness that apparently comes when we buy solutions to make ourselves appear younger, more attractive and slimmer.

And it is exactly this that has made body positivity such an appealing vehicle for brands, slyly wrapping judgment and insecurities up in a box marked as selfempowerment. They market their products as a gift to our self-worth.

It is this gift that landed on the desks of women this week, care of a new Weight Watchers campaign.

Earlier this year, Weight Watchers launched what they considered to be a body-positive initiative. I am sure they thought their messages – ranging from ‘‘learn to love your body’’, to ‘‘weight loss is not a cure-all for self-confidence’’ – would be refreshingly supportive. Perhaps it was refreshing or perhaps it was more laughably obvious Trojan marketing.

This significant shift in messaging from the diet industry giant was not surprising given their poor performance and the success of other body positive campaigns internationally. As a plus-size woman I feel as though marketing aimed at my demographic can be summed up as: All aboard the body positive express. Destination? My wallet.

Weight Watchers’ latest campaign isn’t a friendly girl-to girl-chat about feeling more confident in the bedroom because frankly, Weight Watchers are not your friend. They are a company trying to claw back share price after a bad year.

The real question is why more than a third of Kiwi women avoided having sex because they were worried about how they look. It wouldn’t be due to years of social conditioning that Weight Watchers profited from, would it?

The silver lining in this PR mistake is that it is apparent that we need to call bulls... on any brand trying to sell women self-empowerment and confidence, especially when it comes in a bottle, meal, or magic tea.

Stick to what you’re good at, Weight Watchers, because women are smarter than this.