Finally. FINALLY. I have a legit reason to use my favorite well-worn phrase.
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Ozempic is the world-best known drug since Viagra. Like that little blue pill Pfizer’s marketing team was smart enough to get Hollywood to put into sitcoms to downplay the stigma of age-related erectile dysfunction, Ozempic has jumped from some vile injectible that casts aside weight to a mainstream meme.
You’re going to read words like genetic testing and semaglutide, but fear not. Here, medicine is just a MacGuffin. Nothing more than Tom Hanks’s gimbal lock problem in Apollo 13.
Ozempic is a semaglutide. Which seems to be a word science types use to call us fat without us knowing. You just know those smug smarties are laughing at our lack of sense us as they sip sazeracs out of beakers at their holiday parties. Well, Ozempic isn’t just a semaglutide, it’s the best of the semaglutides and racks up semaglutide profits for its owner, Novo Nordisk.
Novo, which is based in Denmark, makes so much money off Ozempic, it’s tilting the balance of trade balances of Europe. And, here’s why.
We all want to be thin.
Yeah, health blah blah blah. Mainly it’s to be pretty. You see, seeing decades of thin models who graced the covers and many of the inside pages of glossy magazines like Vogue, all the pretty characters we watched on TV, and all the skinny starlets we saw trapse down red carpets to accept even skinnier statuettes did more than the billions of tiny square ads we see every day. They fat shamed us. Well, not me. But a lot of people.
So, those very vain people who worry about thier weight and who sit (literally and figuratively) around America pay telehealth shysters to zoom with doctors up in Nova Scotia to get prescriptions that shed fat the new-fashioned way.
Well, now, two reporters at the New York Times offer this provocation: Novo, “… must remake itself.”
Their story starts here, “Novo Nordisk is not just trying to make more Ozempic and Wegovy. It wants to prevent obesity.” Wegovy is Ozempic’s sister brand. And the story continues here, “Novo Nordisk’s factories work nonstop turning out Ozempic and Wegovy, its blockbuster weight-loss drugs, but the Danish company has far bigger ambitions.”
My story starts here. WHY?
Your factories are working non-stop. You’re making more money than the entire country knows what to do with. Your wallet is too full. And, your diamond shoes are too tight. How many first-world problems can one company have?
The plan, the reporters say, is to use genetic testing to be more targeted. Finally. FINALLY. Something I understand even if it’s mammothly wrongly applied. Sorry, semaglutidinally. Media? ad targeting? That, I get. We’ve peed all over this tree so long it’s got a root system to China. Ironically, the targeting story has a well-built brand to a mass of marketers.
Genetic testing, like every kind of ad targeting costs boatloads of money. Takes watchloads of time. Requires oceanloads of data. And, in far too many cases, the data comes from methods that violate people’s expectations of what privacy means. And, here’s the funny thing. It leads you to a thinner audience. An unsemaglutidinal audience. It’s a long walk to Qura Bar in Hong Kong for a short sip of the most expensive sazerac. $230 very ouchy dollars.
None of this makes sense. Why spend more to make less? Ozempic benefits from a brand that lives rent-free in all our minds. We. Don’t. Want. To. Be. Fat. This isn’t a medicine story. This is a marketing story.
So many brands love to target. It sounds glam. Seductive. Data and sophisticated ad tech show highly nuanced ads to individuals. The relevancy industrial complex powered by nuclear reactors to leverage AI. Targeting is great if you can find exclusive haystacks where people will buy more pricy needles. But, this ain’t that. Ozempic sells pricy needles to people in every haystack.
30% of America is fat. An even higher percentage wants to be thinner. None of us want to get off the couch to work off the fat. Ozempic is medicine’s killer app. It’s an Instagram that slims while you doom scroll with some icky side effects.
More often targeting means two things. First, you don’t have a message that works for a mass audience. Take a moment to realize why that’s a problem. Second, you have more money to spend than you need. It’s fine. Creative agencies get more money for researching and creative more creative. Placement agencies get more money for researching where creative goes and analyzing how creative did. You can ask your boss for more money because: ad tech, relevancy and AI unquestionably lead to higher ROI don’t you know? So, you get bigger budgets, hire more people, manage a bigger fiefdom, and spreading wealth makes more friends.
What do you get when you build a brand? Factories working nonstop to turn out the world’s best-known drug. And a company with semaglutide profit margins.
Which brings us to here.
My favorite well-worn phrase comes from Tony Soprano, “A father bull and son are up on this hill. They’re looking down at a bunch of cows. And the son goes to the father, ‘Dad, why don’t we run down and fuck one of these cows?’ And the father says, ‘Son, why don’t we walk down there and fuck ‘em all?’”
Running down is targeting. Walking down is brand building.
So, to paraphrase, bend, and twist, Tony Soprano, “Why run down with genetic testing and slim one, when you can walk down without genetic-testing and prescribe to all?”
Target fat. My ass.