When Empowerment Backfires: The Psychology of Shame in Health Messaging

Sara Payne [00:00:00]:

Welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sara Payne and I'm bringing you fascinating conversations with some of the industry's top marketing minds. Today's topic is something we don't talk about enough in health marketing, the psychology of shame and the unintended harm that even well meaning health messaging can cause. My guest is J.C. lippold, a nationally recognized teacher of movement and mindset. He's also a researcher and systems change advocate, working with brands like Lululemon, Orange Theory Fitness and Fitbit to make wellness more inclusive and emotionally sustainable. As a trauma informed personal trainer and executive presence coach, he brings a unique perspective to how we show up for ourselves and for others.

Sara Payne [00:01:04]:

That perspective comes through powerfully in his latest research. JC is the lead author of a study called Breaking the Cycle of Understanding and Exploring Solutions to Fitness Shaming. While the research is rooted in the fitness industry, what JC and his co authors uncovered goes well beyond gyms and yoga studios. It speaks to how we as marketers talk about health, wellness and personal transformation in any part of the health journey. Whether you're marketing for chronic conditions, mental health, addiction or metabolic health, this episode will give you a new lens of an important question. Are we motivating or are we shaming? JC welcome to the show.

J.C. Lippold [00:01:53]:

Sara. Thank you. It's always fun to try to sit through an introduction like that and go, ah, someone's talking about me. But no, I, I, I'm excited to go and be Health Marketing Collective conversation and spend some time with you.

Sara Payne [00:02:05]:

Yes. I'm a huge fan of yours. We've worked together in the past and I just couldn't be more excited to have you here to explore this topic together today.

J.C. Lippold [00:02:15]:

Yeah, it's the, the, the, the, the work that you do in the bandwidth of it and the way that, that it impacts people in all aspects of their life is something I'm passionate about and I think this conversation ties right in.

Sara Payne [00:02:27]:

Awesome. Yeah, let's, let's dig in on this research. I'm, I'm curious, what motivated you to take on this research, number one, and number two, what were the findings that really surprised you most?

J.C. Lippold [00:02:42]:

Yeah. So this wonderful team that, that, that, that I've been a part of that we call the Derailing the Shame Research Collective. We were, we. So my friend Amy, who for a long time has been in the dietetic space on the business side of things, approached me to be kind of the humanizer and the storyteller. Along with this research, which 2,000 consumers, 150 registered dietitians and 150 certified fitness professionals to look at. How do we understand the mechanism of shame in the way that we sell food, the way that we sell movement, the way that we sell things that are so human, but because we have KPIs and goals to reach, we go, how can we expedite that process? But of course, shame is the mechanism, creates unsustainable profits and margins and also really, really bad impacts to people's overall health. Here's the headline from the research. Simple sounding solutions to complex problems is the root of, of all shame and a lot of other things too.

J.C. Lippold [00:03:54]:

So we, we, we look at human A's reality versus human B's reality. The fact that they live very different lives. And yet we attempt to sell simple messaging to be like, here's, here's the magic pill, here's the next diet, here's the current workout that you're supposed to do. And so everybody goes, oh, I am human. And they're saying that this is a very simple thing, therefore if I do this thing, all will be well. And we know throughout humanity that's never the case. So it's these simple sounding solutions that marketers are often praised for creating something very kitschy and very sticky and creates that fight flight response in a consumer's mind. We may end up getting that initial response that we want, but as we know, we end up having to go back to the whiteboard again and again and again.

Sara Payne [00:04:44]:

Yeah, and I think as consumers, we're all super familiar with this simplification message, particularly as it pertains to food, nutrition, exercise. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's very much prevalent within that particular segment of, of the industry. And we'll dive into the dangers of that oversimplification in a little bit. But first I wondered if you could talk a little bit about. The research really introduces this, this powerful concept of the cycle of shame that happens. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like and how it, it forms and sort of the progression that people go through with these feelings of shame?

J.C. Lippold [00:05:35]:

Yeah, absolutely. So, so first, I'm a linguist by trade, so words, words are purely vessels until we place something in them. So we hear shame and we go, ooh, I don't like that word. But what it, what, what is shame? I like to compare it to guilt. Right. Guilt is situational. Guilt is I feel bad about something I did. Shame is I am a bad person.

J.C. Lippold [00:05:59]:

So it's, it's intrinsic and to the fact, you know, on average one in three people have felt either food, body or fitness shaming sometime in their life. 89% of those people say that they carry lifelong impacts from that shame. So to the standpoint, 1 in 3 experience it. 9 and 10 carry it with them forever. So to the standpoint, how many of us are in the sphere of someone's shame journey? We could, we could deduce, probably everybody. So the cycle of shame, here's a popular one. How often do we hear something like, hey, eat less and move more. Okay, I'll do that.

J.C. Lippold [00:06:46]:

100 people eat less and move more. And 100 people have different results. A small percentage see the thing that they think is supposed to happen. So they go, oh cool, I did this thing. And that message gets louder with them. But for the majority of people, the cycle begins. They hear a simple message, therefore they think that their, their desires, their goals should be simple to accomplish. Well, they listen to the message, they don't get the result.

J.C. Lippold [00:07:17]:

They think supposed to, that they think is supposed to happen. And they find that it's not simple. They don't meet their goals. So of course, who do they blame? The messaging was, was framed up well. It had a lot of money and a lot of branding behind it. So obviously they're not the problem. I must be the problem, right? And we move through these three stages. Simple messages.

J.C. Lippold [00:07:40]:

First guides us into this feeling of failure which leads us to isolation. Augustine of Hippo thousands of years ago talked about incurvatuse, translated from Latin into English. Shame or guilt makes people curve in on themselves so that patients they're listening to are those recycled ruminating conversations of isolation. That isolation then leads into that, that guilt mechanism which then leads into shame. And then that shame leads into desperation. Where does desperation lead us? I need to find a simple solution. I hadn't fix my brokenness. It is amaz right back to the beginning.

J.C. Lippold [00:08:25]:

I mean I, I, I, I think of it this way, you know, I, I am born and raised in a, in a food desert suburb. We don't have, we've lost our target, we've lost our Walmart, we've lost our grocery stores. For the majority of people who still live in, in, in my hometown, where do they get food from? The corner market, the gas station? You know, it's, it's, it's a, it's an ever changing socioeconomic status reality there. And yet there are three restaurants that I've been able to eat at in my hometown for the last 43 years since I was Born restaurants, these cultural hubs stand the test of time. And yet I think of how many diets have been the diet of diets throughout my 43 years. I think of how many gyms or how many, how many kind of modalities of movement have been the thing you're supposed to do. It changes every six months, every year. It's the, here's the new diet, here's the new workout.

J.C. Lippold [00:09:26]:

Why does that keep happening? Because the cycle of shame leads us back to the start again. It's like, well, I've already done that and it didn't work. I need to do something else. The cycle of shame leads us to a place of ever, ever accelerating moments of desperation. And that's, that's, that's what the research shows again and again.

Sara Payne [00:09:48]:

It's fascinating. I mean, you just brought up so many different points, so many important points, all, all in that one response. And, and I think to some extent that's intentional, right? I mean, we're not going to get into that, but there is, I think, some intentionality in some of the diet culture to lean into the human reaction. Right. Or the human experience of shame to pull you back in again. And we're not going to dig into that. Your research didn't touch on that point either. The point of our conversation today is to have the more productive part of that conversation, which is, you know, even well meaning messages of empowerment can backfire.

Sara Payne [00:10:38]:

And for many of us in health marketing, right, that that was not the intent. And so help us get better educated around this so that we can prevent that from happening. And I think it would be helpful, J.C. if you could provide an example of a message that sounds positive on the surface but could actually trigger that shame or that withdrawal. Withdrawal that you explained.

J.C. Lippold [00:11:10]:

Yeah. And Sara, you just framed it up really well. Anytime we present on this topic, people from going, people go from the mindset of oh my gosh, this is so huge, this is so big. But it also seems like no matter what I say, it can lead to someone experiencing shame. So I'll say up front, the shining light at the end of this tunnel is that when we take shame out of the dark, out of the stigmatized, I don't talk about it. We start to be able to create spaces for people to acknowledge the things they carry and move forward with a more pluralistic mentality of yeah, things may not be easy, but I have power. So here's the one I always go to and I always joke that sooner or later Nike is going to sue me. The wonderful Three words of Nike's fame.

J.C. Lippold [00:12:00]:

Just do it. So I always tell this story of me being the hyper emotional, scared little non athletic child standing on the 3 meter diving board at the Brooklyn Center Community center pattern. All the kids in the water is shouting up to me, just do it, just do it. Just jump, just jump. And what they're saying is they've already done it, they find joy in it. It's not scary to them. So the word just is validated. This is a just act for me.

J.C. Lippold [00:12:32]:

But for me, jumping off that diving board was a, if I do it, I am worthy. I'm a good young boy who even though I'm not athletic, I could, I have hope. And me standing there hearing the word just made me go, this should be easy. But for me it's not because of my mindset, because of my fear, because of, because of how I represent. And I always thought from that moment if they would say, hey, jump if you want to or jump if you find, find the courage to, it would change that mentality. Because we hear just to do it. We think Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and we think of these people who are, you know, just winning NBA titles or, or just doing these things and we go, wow, this should be easy, right? Words like just or only they minimize our reality. I'll, I'll tell a story from one of our, our qualitative interviews.

J.C. Lippold [00:13:27]:

Her, her, her, her name is McDariana. McDariana. Single mom, two kids, working two jobs and, and going back to school. Wow. Magariana shared and shame was, was, was, was emanating from her voice how at the end of the day, you know, doing all the things that Magarion had to do, how bad she felt when she was too tired to quote quote cook the healthy meal or quote quote go to the gym says, you know, I just didn't have, I just didn't have the will or the, or the commitment to stay on my goals or stay on my path of what was set up for me to be enough. And as we unpack that Magnariana is reflecting back what the world is saying should be the normative. So things like, hey, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, or we all have the same 24 hours or hey, one hour is, is 4% of your day or hey, you look good, did you lose some weight? If we take a moment and go, what's really being said here is a response to the cultural normative of what is enough of what is baseline healthiness, which again, in a pluralistic society where people are all living different realities, that simplified language or that almost overly sugary, you know, capacity to go. It's like, oh, yeah, that sounds really easy and really good.

J.C. Lippold [00:14:56]:

And so you think about it for two seconds and that's what most people are doing and ruminating on.

Sara Payne [00:15:00]:

Yes, such great examples there. Thank you for providing those. And I feel validated on some level because I too was the scared child on the diving board who took forever to make the jump. And I. There was, there was an aha moment for me and how you were referring, framing the language around that where, even where you were talking earlier, like, it's okay to acknowledge the shame, right? Like, even for someone to say, like, I get it, jc it's scary jump if you want, like, no big deal. That totally changes, changes that framing.

J.C. Lippold [00:15:41]:

We talk.

Sara Payne [00:15:41]:

I mentioned earlier that, that when I was reading this research, what really spoke to me is that while your research is rooted in fitness, but these patterns that you describe, I believe really show up across all different spectrums of healthcare, especially in areas like, I was thinking about chronic illness, I was thinking about addiction, I was thinking about mental health. The. There's a lot of stigma in many of these areas. Think about, you know, again, metabolic disorder. So what should healthc care marketers understand about how shame shows up in these contexts? And again, what are some ways that we can avoid unintentionally reinforcing it through our messaging?

J.C. Lippold [00:16:33]:

Yeah, you know, I recently saw a quote on a, you know, an X or a Twitter, you know, and someone said, in essence, gosh, it's amazing how hard it is to have a moderately clean house and a mediocre physique. The interesting thing about that statement was the aha that they had of how hard it was to reach the baseline of what is seen as socially acceptable in terms of how do we speak to shame or how do we speak to the consumer through the shame? I always like to triangulate this. So if you are in a position of, of. Of communicator, if you are a provider, if you are a marketer, if you, if, if, if you oversee people who are thinking about how we speak about health in any of the arenas which you just shared, there's three voices in that conversation. There's you, there is the consumer, there's, there's the patient, the client, that the human being. And then there's the shame. The shame has its own voice. So often us, as the caring individual or the one attempting to communicate, we respond to who speaks the loudest.

J.C. Lippold [00:17:51]:

And so often that's the shame. So if we think in these situations, you know, let's say, let's say I'm speaking to, let's say I'm personal training someone who has a heavy dose of shame, that's changed the way that they respond and they hear, hey, you know what, if this doesn't feel right in your body, here are other options or pathways that you can take. What the shame is going to hear is, no, I'm not going to let you tell me that I'm not good enough to, to do the full expression or the enough expression. And then if we respond to that voice, the shame goes, haha, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the powerful one here. If we go, yeah, isn't it funny how we've always heard that, you know, it's okay to take a break but you can do more? It's like we never say it's okay to do more, we only say it's okay to do less. So if we start speaking to the consumer, the consumer goes, oh, I still have, I still have worth here. Yes, I carry this shame on my shoulder. But this person who's communicating with me, this person who has power, who has expertise, who has influence over, over my well being, is choosing to see me alongside the shame.

J.C. Lippold [00:19:08]:

They're calling the shame what it is, but they're speaking to me. How do we reframe our messaging in that lens? I think as I've looked at the repercussions of this research over the last couple of years, I always pause and I go, who am I responding to right now? Is it the shame or is it the human? Respond to the human? The messaging comes pretty quickly.

Sara Payne [00:19:33]:

So interesting. And what I kept seeing in my head as you were explaining all of that is the plot line for Inside Out 3. I think the folks at Disney ought to give you a call as Riley, the main character, right, grows into her adulthood. This, this whole experience, right, of, of shame, I think is, is inevitable. Anyway, you can thank me for that later when you get the check of the mail from Disney. But, but that's what I kept seeing because you're absolutely right is shame has its own voice and we have to really make sure that we are aware of that and thinking through, you know, which, which of those audiences are we speaking to, as you said?

J.C. Lippold [00:20:26]:

Well, it, and it's, it's, it's I, I, I, I, I want to say it's funny. That and it's, it's actually the opposite of funny. But, but it's, it plays into that. Oh my Gosh, is this really happening voice? Some of, some of the numbers that came back from this research is it shows how much shame changes who we are. For example, who is the diet culture, who is fitness culture normally focus on who is the target audience? 18 to 45 year old white, upper socioeconomic women who have a bachelor's degree, a liberal like, and we look at that. And yet who also is the. Is the part of our society, the part of our population that is doing the most self work, who is actually ever growing and thinking it is also that part of culture. But we don't have to make people feel like awful, less than people in order to create those responses.

J.C. Lippold [00:21:25]:

But so often we think that if it's about us being better, we have to show up and suck. We have to grit and grin and bear it. We have to never miss a Monday. We have to all these things. Absolutely not true. But I, you, you're absolutely right. Like, like the inside out mentality of. Or back to like, you know, I'm an old millennial.

J.C. Lippold [00:21:44]:

Like there was a TV show called Herman's Head where like all the voices were in Herman's head and telling him where to go and what to do. Those voices have power and if we don't acknowledge them, the consumer starts to imagine that they're only making them up, which isn't the case.

Sara Payne [00:21:58]:

Yeah, yeah, great point. Let's go back to the point about simplicity, right? There's a tricky balance there because as marketers we're always told keep our messaging simple, right? That's what's going to make it resonate. How do we balance the clarity of say, a direct call to action, like just do it without implying that success is easy or that it's. To your point, one size fits all.

J.C. Lippold [00:22:33]:

Yeah, and, and, and I think we hear that in our fight flight response goes, gosh, if the world is complex, how do we communicate simply? And it's because what humans need is actually pretty simple. We're designed with a nervous system and that nervous system doesn't have an opinion. Like when we're on the treadmill and our body starts going, something's happening, something's happening. We are trained culturally to think that that means that we are weak because we see in the poster the model who is smiling and is perfect and wonderful and the overly simplified message is oversimplifying the wrong thing. Like you say, just do it. Sounds simple. You want to know what's even simpler? Do it. If you take out the word just, it now includes everybody.

J.C. Lippold [00:23:23]:

It doesn't minimize Any person's example. But what does just do just makes it seem like it should be easier than it is. This is when I often pick up my water bottle, I give it a little shake and I. And I say this. I think the marketing of water is one of the most fascinating things in the last 50 years, and here's why. 50 years ago, we didn't try to shame people into drinking water. We did the eight glasses a day thing. Like we've, we've had the marketing schemes, but they never really worked.

J.C. Lippold [00:23:54]:

What worked with water? We created reusable water bottles every single time. I'm kind of a rain man this way. I walk into any coffee shop or any place where there's people sitting at tables and I look around and I count how many water bottles. They're all over the place. Every brand, every, every business, every enterprise. What's their giveaway tchotchke nowadays? A branded reusable water bottle. We didn't have to make people feel bad about themselves to drink more water. We had to educate them as to why drinking water is always a good thing for humans.

J.C. Lippold [00:24:28]:

So what do we have now? We have people who drink water. Guess what? Movement food that satisfies our cravings and our urge and our desire for fuel. These are human things. But humans have been removed from their own well being for so long that they don't actually think that what their body's telling them is valid or should be trusted. So the most simple message, acknowledge people's humanities, acknowledge people's realities, message to that. And then they will ask you questions, they'll ask you for direction, they'll ask you for your input because now they know that they are a part of their conversation which they've been removed from for so long.

Sara Payne [00:25:16]:

Yeah, that's so great. I love everything you said there. And I laugh at the, at the hydration thing as well. Ain't no generation as hydrated as the generation of kids that are in school these days walking around with their Stanleys and their awalas in there. Like you and I did not do that. We walked to the drinking fountain down the hallway when we were allowed to, right, to get a sip of water at one point in time in the afternoon when it was convenient. Right. That was it.

J.C. Lippold [00:25:48]:

Well, and, and Sara, it's funny because we are also right at the edge of the generational water bottles. Like we, like we are right on the edge of the Nalgene generation, which then became the Coleman generation, which then became the hydro flask generation and the beaker generation. And now we're back to the Coleman generation again. It's so funny. Like, we now I can generationalize people by what water bottle they carry. When we were kids, you had to get the little pass off the door to be given the opportunity to drink water. Very different. That's what we're doing with most health and wellness today.

J.C. Lippold [00:26:24]:

If you give enough of your income, then you can go run on the fancy treadmill. If you go to the right grocery store, live in the right neighborhood, then you can go to the right salad bar. It's like, nah. Actually, it is so simple. If we return to the fact that people want to be nourished and whole.

Sara Payne [00:26:42]:

Yes. One of the points that you mentioned earlier that I wanted to follow up on was this concept that we have to be really careful that everybody is individual. Everybody is bringing their own past experiences, past failures, even trauma. And yet so often, you know, today there's so much we can do from a personalization standpoint in marketing that has improved dramatically. I will say that. But still, so often we are speaking to broad audiences, and we often don't know what personal. Even if we do research, we don't know what personal experiences people are bringing with them. Or even if we did do research, maybe they aren't willing to fully be transparent and share all of that.

Sara Payne [00:27:26]:

So how should marketers apply this lens of psychology or mental health literacy, whatever you want to call it, in how they frame wellness and behavior change more broadly?

J.C. Lippold [00:27:45]:

Yeah, I like thinking of this as an upside down pyramid. If we think of the top of the upside down pyramid, the big chunk, there are messages that apply to everybody. There are messages that will resonate with people regardless of their social determinants of health or socioeconomic status, their age, their generation, their race, their gender. And those things are things like, hey, move your body in ways that feel good every day. Yeah, but I. But I have a bad hip, or I have this, or I live in a neighborhood where there's no sidewalks, or I yada, yada, yada. It's like, yeah, so how can you. How can you move your body today? I think of.

J.C. Lippold [00:28:35]:

I'll go back to the kind of the upper socioeconomic mentality. I think of the mother who takes her three children, her spouse, on a week's vacation to Disney World. That woman gets back, and on the other side, she goes, oh, my gosh, I'm so out of it. I haven't exercised in a week. I haven't done it. And I go, okay, pause. You just lugged four human beings around Disney World 12 hours a day for a whole week. Um, didn't have any breaks, didn't have any time to yourself.

J.C. Lippold [00:29:06]:

I actually think you probably physically exerted and in those moments, your body craves water, your body craves nourishing food, you know, yada yada yada, you're actually probably in better shape on the other side of that week than you were before. But because they're existing in the small part of that triangle at the bottom of their uniqueness, but they're attempting to apply it to, well, I am enough when I go to the gym five times a week and I have my yadda yadda yadda. Messaging can hit everybody. And the great thing about how we can segment population and with the realities of how we can reach specific audiences through everything nowadays there's messaging that reaches everybody. And then if we look into our localized communities as to what people need from us, how and when those, those messages can become more and more acute to who are speaking to. But the end of the day when we think that what people need to hear from us is, well, people have a problem and they want us to tell us the answer. No, people want us to see that we are acknowledging who they are. I'll say I'm a first ring suburb kid from a, from a suburban food desert.

J.C. Lippold [00:30:22]:

Now I am a big proponent of, of cereal. I love cereal. Why? Because it's fortified, it's shelf stable, it's nutritious, it's delicious. It's, it's all of the things that people who come from my background need. Now again we look at the age of going ultra processed food bad. In reality, there's a lot of really, really healthy, quote, quote healthy food that is, that is ultra processed. My, my one, one of my, my very good friends always says that the food you eat has nothing to do with the morality of who you are as a human being. But so often health, wellness, food, fitness is attached to the goodness you are as a person, which then attaches us to the segmentations of culture and society that we are placed with.

J.C. Lippold [00:31:14]:

And I think from a marketing lens, if we can extract those things almost back to the triangulation of shame, who is the person that we're attempting to market to? Not their, not their perception of themselves, not the thing that they think is going to make them be good enough, but who they are at a base human level. Because at the end of the day, it shouldn't be hard to market things that are innately good for people to them. But we spin it enough ways and all of a sudden, we think we're playing a different game than we're actually playing.

Sara Payne [00:31:44]:

Yeah, that one really resonated with me on a deep emotional level where you were talking about, you know, your. Your sense of being a good person, right? You. You do this behavior, you follow this pathway. You're good, you don't. You're bad. Right. And there's this implication that it's not just this pathway, but it's this pathway all of the time. Right.

Sara Payne [00:32:08]:

And if you're not, then you're. Then you're bad. And I think about this on so many levels. I think about a doctor visit, I think about the person, you know, who. Who may be told every time they go, you know, you need to lose some weight. Right? And. And why. Why is it.

Sara Payne [00:32:27]:

Every time they go, why is it not changing? Right? Because there's so much shame attached to that. And so then I think about it in terms of the stories that we're telling as marketers, the content that we're creating, that we could really serve our audiences well by delivering up much more content that shows the real side of the story versus the always on the right pathway, the more perfectionist or the idealistic route, and just the acknowledgment of, you're human. We understand it's hard or JC on the diving board. I get it. It's scary, right? And so the education of telling someone what behavior changes they should be adopting is important, but it needs to come with that level of, it's okay. We're not looking. We're not looking for perfect. Nobody's perfect.

Sara Payne [00:33:34]:

That's not right. Like, if you could do it. I don't even know. Right. What the. What the statistic is, but if you could do it more than 50% of the time, or maybe even 50% of the time, gosh, you would be on a significantly better. Right. We're not looking for a hundred.

Sara Payne [00:33:52]:

We're not looking for 90. And don't shame yourself for that, you know, 10%. You're missing the mark there. No, no, no, no. Like, we've got to celebrate the wins on. On the smallest level.

J.C. Lippold [00:34:07]:

Yeah. One of the, you know, at the end of every time we present this and people go, gosh, what do we do? And I always say these four words do little things often. And again, that's like, yes, that's. That's habit formation. But at the end of the day, that little voice inside your head is going, am I enough? Am I worthy? And the answer to that question, it's the prerequisite, like you say, how do we increase the solubility of the good stuff that we're saying? We need to let the people know that they are innately good, that they are innately worthy, that they are innately that they can still win the game. I also, my sports psychology brain always says this. Here's the key to sport. Here's what Michael Jordan and Serena Williams did better than anybody else.

J.C. Lippold [00:34:56]:

They got to ready position first. They weren't always stronger, harder, faster, deeper. They said, in this moment, what am I capable of? Here's my opportunity, here's what I can do in this moment. And those are world class athletes. That's the only thing that transcends any other thing. Because there are times that they were not the best athlete, but they were the one who was most consciously aware of what the opportunity was in, in that moment. Imagine if the people that you are marketing to are going, you know what? I'm so ready to do something good for myself today. What do you got? And you say, hey, this apple's probably gonna taste, taste really good right now.

J.C. Lippold [00:35:36]:

Sweet. Give me that apple. As opposed to an apple a day will keep the doctor away. Wait, so if I don't eat an apple, I'm gonna have to go to the doctor. But what if I miss. But I wasn't at home on Tuesday and then we were out at apples and all of a sudden, and all of a sudden it's, we see how quickly the, the thing that almost sounds too good to be true. Or the thing it's, well, hey, eat an apple a day and it'll keep the doctor away. But if you miss every once in a while, that's okay too.

J.C. Lippold [00:36:04]:

You only use that pandering, okay language in situations like that. So people go, no, you're lying to me. You're telling me, you're trying to tell me that I'm okay when you've already told me that I'm not okay. And then they go into that, that I'm small and I'm isolated, I'm humiliated and I'm ashamed. And now I urgently need to figure out what to do to fix myself. Yeah, listen, it's a lot simpler than we think.

Sara Payne [00:36:27]:

Language that is less punitive in nature. Right. And more and not going to trigger that shame response. We're, you know, such a great topic and I feel like on some levels we're only scratching the surface. And I will be sure that we're going to link out to your full research in the show notes so that people can dive in deeper and reach out to you with questions they have around this. What's the one? As we, as we end the conversation? JC what's the biggest takeaway that you would hope health marketers have from this conversation from listening in today?

J.C. Lippold [00:37:12]:

Yeah, it's, it's this. One of my favorite quotes is by Edith Wharton. And Edith says that there are two ways of sharing light. From the candle and from the mirror. Health marketers, there are times that your consumer is coming to you for you to be the candle. They're coming to you to go and receive information or to receive clarity or to know is it this or is it that? But there are a lot of times that the consumer is coming to you for you to be the mirror, for you to say, hey, consumer, your life is complex. Your life is unique and specific. You are a whole being and you have everything that you need.

J.C. Lippold [00:37:51]:

And I'm going to reflect that back to you because marketers, at the end of the day, I've had, I've had C suite individuals say, you need to come and talk to our marketing department because we've set them up. Their KPIs are all around this idea of sell, sell, sell, and they're not thinking the implications of how they're sell, sell, selling. And if you speak to our marketing department, they're going to start considering when do they need to be the candle and when do they need to be the mirror. It's sustainable success, but it's also the humane thing to do. So that's what I got.

Sara Payne [00:38:26]:

Wow, that was really powerful. Such a great analogy, such a great way to wrap the conversation. And I even suspect that some folks may be reaching out to you to say, hey, we need you to come in and give us that same talk. Because we may need to check ourselves too on some of that messaging to that point. JC where can folks, how can folks get in touch with you?

J.C. Lippold [00:38:54]:

Yeah, and I mean this when I say it. I love connecting with people I don't know yet. That's what I like to call strangers. So you can find me on LinkedIn, JosephLipple, and I'm also on all the socials or you can find me on my website, jclipple.com amazing.

Sara Payne [00:39:08]:

Thank you so much for joining me today. It's such a powerful conversation and I really do hope that the conversation will help people really think differently about motivation and communication and empathy when it comes to health marketing.

J.C. Lippold [00:39:25]:

Thanks, Sara.

Sara Payne [00:39:28]:

And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in to the health marketing collective where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. Because the future of healthcare depends on it. We'll see you next time.