Serena Williams announced a 31lb weight loss through a synchronized media rollout across People, Vogue, NBC's Today, and Elle under a strict 9am embargo. The campaign coincided with the US Open and promoted telehealth company Ro and GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, noting her husband Alexis Ohanian sits on Ro's board. The partnership is a multiyear campaign across billboards, digital platforms, and television, using Williams's visibility to normalize GLP-1 drugs for people beyond typical patients and position them as lifestyle products.
When Serena Williams was featured in a People magazine story on Thursday morning discussing her 31lb weight loss, the rollout had all the hallmarks of an advertisement draped in the thin veil of an all-caps EXCLUSIVE. Vogue's social channels amplified their own access, NBC's Today show gave her a one-on-one segment and Elle published a carefully packaged interview in which Williams declared she wanted to break the stigma around weight-loss drugs.
This vintage Jill Smoller quadrafecta was not a spontaneous confessional; it was a coordinated media blitz pegged to the US Open, the tentpole event of American tennis, which kicks off on Sunday in earnest. Yet for all the precision and polish, it was unmistakably a commercial. The product wasn't just Williams's refined physique, already the subject of months-long speculation among her 32 million followers across social media.
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