When it was recently announced that chef Paula Deen, the “Queen of Butter,” had Type II diabetes, I don’t think anyone raised an eyebrow. After all, she is morbidly obese and eats butter and other fattening foods like it’s going out of style.
But her decision to time her announcement with her new spokesperson position for Victoza, the new Type II diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk, was a little questionable. Why hadn’t she announced it when she knew she had the disease three years earlier? And perhaps more importantly, how can she continue to dispense her fat-laden recipes to the world as if she doesn’t know what harm it does?
While the pharma company acknowledged that choosing her as a spokesperson was going to be controversial, I would say that it has proven to be more misguided.
There has been a great deal of backlash about this, and I doubt any of it is going to help Victoza or Deen.
If Deen took a new tack, and perhaps started creating more healthy recipes and warning about the dangers of diabetes, I think most people would approve, even if her announcement seemed mercenary and disingenuous at first.
It’s sometimes a gamble when betting on a spokesperson to represent a brand, but the company (and its agency) should have thought this one through and/or changed Deen’s message.
