No one questions that people with diabetes or heart disease need medical care. But even though obesity is driven by biology/genetics and linked to 60+ serious health conditions – society still treats it as a lifestyle issue – not a medical one.

To change this perspective, we must change the conversation. Instead of shame and blame, we need to talk facts and science. Through a PR-first, earned+more initiative, our client’s goal is to grow that conversation into a national movement that mainstreams our understanding of obesity as a disease that requires care.

With its long history in chronic disease and deep understanding of the patient experience, our client sees obesity as the most significant healthcare imperative of our time. With prevalence rates projected to impact half of the US adult population by 2030, our campaign needed to not only resonate with those living with the disease, but also with the people who know and love them.

Our objective was to first spark disease awareness by developing an idea that would challenge the bias and stigma around obesity, change the conversation to reflect the realities of the disease, and inspire people everywhere to seek further information.

And we needed to accomplish this without setting back any other movement around weight such as Body Positivity that focuses on celebrating the body at any size.

We utilized research to validate our integrated campaign strategy and creative approach, execution and earned activation.

We began with this insight: living with obesity can feel isolating and defeating. To mitigate those emotions, we knew we must lead with empathy as we lay the groundwork for a new conversation around obesity.

Yet, research revealed that when the word “obesity” was mentioned in communications, viewers were extremely likely to tune out. So, we asked ourselves, "How do you change the way society thinks about obesity without saying the word?"

Enter It’s Bigger Than Me. Simple but powerful, this thematic captures the core message that obesity is bigger than anything we think it is – like willpower, habits, or personal behaviors – and naturally segues to the broader conversation around its real contributing factors. It also infers community – because if “it’s bigger than me,” that means it’s bigger than you too. We’re all in this together.

To inform our PR strategy, we employed multi-phased research to measure the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of people living with obesity and the general public. Our findings informed how our audience perceives the language around weight, as well as what information would compel their attention and motivate personal sharing.

Based on findings, we aimed to entertain, then educate, through creative storytelling – using an integrated multi-channel approach. By enlisting cultural icon Queen Latifah, we created an unbranded original video series meant to showcase the multiple nuances around obesity in creative and surprising ways. We also leveraged the power of Queen Latifah's influence to connect with key media at launch. We further amplified reach by engaging audiences with relatable content and through social and paid media, and internal comms –– all leading to itsbiggerthan.com for an in-depth educational experience.

Prior to launch, we sparked interest by teasing the video series (including original sitcom, drama and crime show formats to bring Queen’s experiences with obesity to life) on Queen Latifah's social media to generate curiosity about our website and organic social.

At launch, we secured a first wave of earned media coverage with 16 embargoed interviews to kick off the conversation. Coverage eventually spanned entertainment, consumer and health-focused outlets, including People, Entertainment Tonight, Essence, Health Magazine, and more. Predominantly positive in tone, media stories focused on Queen Latifah’s experiences with obesity, influencer stories, and the importance of overcoming bias and improving care.

From there, we focused on maintaining momentum by educating audiences through a sustainable 360-degree paid media campaign for earned coverage across partner channels, social media, micro-communities and media outlets.

The success of the campaign launch has resulted in plans to carry the conversation forward into 2022.

Earned, owned and paid promotion – all leveraging real-life and fictional storytelling – resulted in break-through success:

• Earned: The launch, along with Queen Latifah's media day, generated a frenzy of positive, high message pull-through coverage with 147 broadcast airings, 146 unique stories, 143B potential impressions, and a complete organic takeover of the Google news section.

• Digital: As of April 7, 2022, the campaign attracted 835.3K visitors to itsbiggerthan.com, generating 912.4K sessions and 1.75M page views.

• Social/Videos: Across social channels, our videos reached over 26M users and generated more than 7M total engagements to date.

• Internal: Over 5.5K employees engaged with It's Bigger Than Me content.

The successful U.S. launch led to the campaign’s launch in Spain in December 2021 and plans to bring other countries into the movement in 2022.