At the entrance to our local supermarket, there are huge posters promoting the What will you gain? campaign from Kellogg’s Special K. The idea is not to focus on the numbers on the scale, instead focusing on the positive emotions you will gain when you lose weight. On the face of it, it’s a positive campaign. A spokesperson for the company starts off great:
“It truly is not what the numbers on the scale read, but how you feel about yourself that allows you to project beauty and confidence to the world,” said Jesper Lund Jacobsen, associate director, Special K® brand.
But then…
“That is what the new Special K brand campaign is all about, reminding women of the positive emotional benefits that come from reaching weight-management goals. It’s not what you lose, but what you gain in the process that translates into the real reward.”
The most prominent posters I see when I go into the store show the familiar weight window on a scale saying this kind of stuff instead of the normal numbers:
You get the idea. Here’s my problem with this concept, as well-intentioned as it may be: it tells women that how they feel should be linked to what they weigh.
I have a major problem with that. We are forever being told that happiness lies in acquiring the latest gadget, or losing weight, or getting fit, or achieving this or that goal. As long as we think that way, happiness will elude us.
Happiness lies in the way you think about life, and consequently, the way you interact with your environment (I include the people around you in ‘environment’ here). It’s as simple as that.
So why get worried enough about an ad campaign to devote a post to it? Because depression is reaching epidemic proportions, and suicide is one of the leading causes of unnatural death in an increasing number of countries. A message such as Special K’s reinforces the doomed idea that the way out of this depression lies anywhere other than in a foundational shift of our thinking. It’s like seeing someone swim upstream and urging them to swim harder or kick faster instead of pointing out that you can turn and swim with the stream.
Please also read this brilliant commentary on the same campaign.
