Weight Watchers stock jumps after DJ Khaled is named social media ambassador

Weight Watchers' stock rose 6 percent Tuesday after it announced that the music producer DJ Khaled would be its 2018 social media ambassador.

As part of the deal, the producer, whose legal name is Khaled Mohamed Khaled, will document his own weight loss for his 3.92 million Twitter and 8.9 million Instagram followers. He also gets three million to four million views per snap on Snapchat, according to a report on CNBC.

Khaled will follow the "WW Freestyle" weight-loss program, which debuted in December. Weight Watchers' hallmark is its points system, which dieters use to track their daily intake. Until now, only certain fruits and vegetables had zero points; the new program  expands the zero-point food list.

The move could make the weight loss brand, founded a half-century ago by New York suburbanite Jean Nidetch  and now partly owned by Oprah Winfrey, relevant to a new generation of overweight Americans.

The 42-year-old New Orleans-born artist, who is of Palestinian descent, was working as a DJ under the name Arab Attack in the 1990s. He changed his stage name after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Since 2006, he has produced 10 albums of his own, was president of Def Jam Records South, and co-founded the record label We the Best Music Group.  In 2010, his single "All I Do I Win" with Ludacris and Snoop Dogg went double-platinum.

Khaled has collaborated with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, and Nicki Minaj, producing such hits as  "I'm the One" and "I'm So Hood," Biography.com reported.

This isn't the first time Weight Watchers stock has received a nice bump after aligning with a celebrity.

In 2015, the company's lagging stock doubled to $13.92 a share, adding about $400 million to its market value, when Winfrey, whose weight battles have made headlines for years, announced she would purchase a nearly 10 percent stake in the company and take a seat on the board, the New York Times reported.

In the United States, more than 70 percent of adults over age 20 are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the same time, interest in weight loss companies and losing weight has been declining, in part because of the growing "fat acceptance" movement, the Times reported.