The Drugs Have Won and the Smart Money Knows It (credit to Jake Novak for this great
ThoughtSparks
RitaMcGrath“What do you do when your most visible and notable spokesperson basically declares that what you’re doing is ineffective? We’re about to find out how WW (formerly Weight Watchers) navigates.”
– Rita McGrath | Thought Sparks
TWeight Watchers was founded by a nurse, Jean Nidtech, who had tried every kind of diet known, unsuccessfully. She eventually attended a 10-week long program offered for free by the New York City Board of Health’s obesity clinic. The prescribed diet was called “The Prudent Diet” and it worked! Jean lost 20 pounds. Like many who enjoy an initial weight loss, though, she found her commitment waning once the program, and the camaraderie that she had with fellow participants ended. So she began to coordinate weekly meetings with a support group of her own, planting the seed for the company that would become Weight Watchers.
Shortly after our daughter was born, and anxious about getting my now-post-2-children body back into some kind of form, I sampled a Weight Watchers meeting. It would have been in mid-October. The first thing was the weigh-in. To a newcomer, that felt strange. Then we had a short pep talk from the group organizers, who seemed very committed to the success of the group. Then we went around the room and everyone was asked to share strategies and ideas.
In 1978, Heinz bought Weight Watchers for $71 million, a pretty good price at the time. It sold 80% of the company to Artal Luxembourg S.A., a private European investment firm, in June of 1999. It became a public company in 2001. The company experimented, making it simpler for members to keep track of their consumption using a points system. It formed an unlikely partnership with Burger King to offer Weight Watchers hot meals in its restaurants.
In 2021 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that would change the conversation about weight management forever. It showed that weekly semaglutide injections led to an average 14.9 percent weight loss in overweight and obese people. This result got a lot of attention because it was part of an actual controlled experiment. The researchers took nearly 2,000 patients that were not diabetic, but who did have Body Mass Indices of at least 30.
Oprah Winfrey’s weight has been a decadeslong obsession, both for her and for her fans and critics alike. Like many people struggling with maintaining a healthy weight, she admitted to internalizing the blame for being heavy on insufficient willpower and poor choices.
Well, as Suzy Welch observes on LinkedIn, this “should scare the daylights out of every one of us who leads anything. We do not pay enough attention, any of us, me included, to existential threats. Like, say, our very famous spokesperson rendering our product meaningless overnight. But that’s what leaders are supposed to do, right? We are supposed to care about our people, yes – but also see around the corners no one else even sees coming.
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