Obesity drugs are creating a tremendous change in care—and in how we think and talk about weight. It’s demanding more from marketing pros, journalists, and other professional communicators, and I’m not sure we’re ready.

The foundation of successful communication is knowing your audience. Understanding their pain points. Having empathy.

But in our slimness-obsessed society, really listening to people with obesity is the last thing we’re conditioned to do.

Remember when no one even wanted to be close friends with someone who has obesity because a study said your chance of becoming obese goes up if you are?

(I still wonder how much that study and the media about it contributed to loneliness, another health epidemic.)

A recent episode of What Now? with Trevor Noah about the Ozempic obsession called out how obesity is one of the few things where people make assumptions and judgments about people and feel free to express them: 

“…like I saw on TikTok. A woman was, like, being fat and exercising as people on the street were going, ‘Go you! I’m so proud of you!’ and she was like, ‘I’m just on a run.’ Why do you feel this need to encourage people as if they should be pitied and use your encouragement in a way that’s kind of infantilizing? That’s the thing about fat phobia. We feel like we can just say anything to people who are fat and often it’s really cruel.”

—What Now? with Trevor Noah

Yet people—customers and patients—are more receptive and engaged when they feel heard.  

“…feeling heard is conceptualized as consisting of five components at two conceptual levels. At the interpersonal level people feel heard when they have 1) voice, and receive 2) attention, 3) empathy, 4) respect. At the collective level people should experience 5) common ground.”

—Feeling heard: Operationalizing a key concept for social relations

How do we help people feel heard when we’ve been conditioned to tune them out?

It’ll take self-awareness, openness, and curiosity. If we communicators do it right, we’ll have a lot to contribute. We have the opportunity to reach people and shape the public conversation about obesity during this amazing innovation in medicine. 

Sources

Roos CA, Postmes T, Koudenburg N. Feeling heard: Operationalizing a key concept for social relations. PLoS One. 2023 Nov 30;18(11):e0292865. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292865. PMID: 38032901; PMCID: PMC10688667.

[Spotify]. (2024, May 16). The Ozempic Obsession with Jia Tolentino [Video]. What Now? With Trevor Noah. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7raSIEMn6rSqDjNh3ZJLKZ