For the final episode of Season One of Well Played: Conversations on Marketing and Brand, we're tackling a prickly one: What happens to the multi-million-dollar health and wellness industry when one class of drugs fundamentally changes a problem it has spent decades trying to solve?

GLP-1 medications aren't just changing conversations around weight loss. They're influencing the language of wellness, the businesses being built around it, the creators we're watching, the bodies we're seeing in campaigns and, potentially, our perception of what "healthy" looks like.

And what responsibility do marketers and brands have when there's money to be made from the shift?

For years, mainstream wellness messaging encouraged us to move our bodies, eat well, take our supplements, get our steps, improve our sleep and work on our gut health.

But somewhere along the way, wellness stopped being a category and became an identity.

Now GLP-1 medications are disrupting one of the largest commercial engines underneath the wellness industry: weight management.

We're not debating whether GLP-1 medications have an appropriate medical role — that's a conversation for patients and their healthcare professionals.

We're interested in the marketing and brand implications.

If consumer behaviour changes dramatically, what happens to the fitness programs, weight-loss businesses, supplements, food brands and influencers that built businesses around the old model?

And when a commercial opportunity emerges, where should brands draw the ethical line?

We unpack:

• GLP-1s and the changing wellness economy
• Sam Wood's Ollo for Women and the evolution of traditional fitness businesses, 28bySamWood
• SkinnyTok and the return of thinness online
• Body positivity, sizing and the responsibility of fashion brands
• Influencer transparency around weight loss
• Protein, creatine, NMN and wellness marketing
• Where brands should draw the ethical line
• Why LivEat offers a different model for health and wellness
• Gemma Diamond, Lisa DeSantis and Sophia Beg pushing back against shrinking body ideals
• Sydney Airport's response to Sophia Beg's gluten-free criticism in our final Well Played or No Played

🎧 Follow or subscribe to Well Played: Conversations on Marketing and Brand wherever you listen so Season Two lands automatically.

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Until Season Two, play on.

Much love,

Kate & Esther.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a brand crisis unfolds online, silence is never neutral. What happens when your brand suddenly becomes the internet’s whipping boy?

In Episode 8 of Well Played: Conversations on Marketing and Brand, Esther Kelleher and Kate Ware unpack the new rules of brand crisis management, where backlash moves faster than a traditional media statement and every customer, creator and former collaborator has a public platform.

Through two very different real-time case studies, we look at what happens when brands respond defensively, emotionally or too slowly, and why the goal in a crisis should not be to win the argument, but to win back trust.

Using the controversies surrounding New Zealand streetwear brand Huffer and Australian sunscreen brand Ultra Violette, they explore what happens when brands block criticism, respond emotionally or rely on traditional PR outlets while the real conversation is unfolding online.

It raises a fundamental question for modern brands: when a crisis is happening on social media, can you still manage it through traditional PR outlets and frameworks or do you meet the crisis where it is unfolding?

Ultra Violette’s recovery offers a fascinating lesson in the power of existing brand equity, community trust and continuing to show up, even when the public conversation becomes uncomfortable.

Plus, Kate recalls managing the social media tsunami surrounding Australia’s failed online Census launch, and The Natural Confectionery Company’s Giant Snakes ad receives the Well Played or No Played treatment.

• Huffer
• Ultra Violette
• CHOICE
• The Natural Confectionery Company
• Tesla
• Kmart
• Mecca
• Adore Beauty
• Chemist Warehouse
• Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Census
• Wilkinson Group
• Contemporary 100
• Elijah Major
• Ash London
• Crazy Auntie Anne
• Zoe Foster Blake
• Elon Musk
• Donald Trump
• Peter Wilkinson
• Robert Irwin

This is an essential listen for marketers, founders, communications leaders and anyone responsible for protecting a brand’s reputation online. New episodes every Thursday. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok: @wellplayedpod

We’d love you to leave us a review or share with your networks if you’ve enjoyed this episode. We are an independently run podcast and every share and follow gives us a great opportunity to get our message and content out to the right listeners.

Much love, Kate & Esther.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.