And the Oscar goes to....Big Pharma ads?

At a cost of maybe $2m for 30 seconds!

MM+M (Medical Marketing + Media) magazine tells us that:

One firm estimated that commercials aired during last week’s Oscars ceremony were 172 percent more effective than the average in prime-time TV - that an advertiser would need to air about 88 prime time ads to generate as much impact as just one ad during the Oscars. A 30-second commercial during the Oscars was estimated to cost around $2 million.

It’s no surprise that GLP-1 drugs were featured. And it wasn’t their first time drawing attention at the Oscars.

Last year, host Jimmy Kimmel asked, “When I look around this room, I can’t help but wonder, ‘Is Ozempic right for me?’ “

Last year, the xtalks.com website reported:

Eli Lilly took the stage with a TV ad that took shots at Hollywood’s latest weight loss frenzy — GLP-1 drugs.

Lilly, maker of GLP-1 receptor agonists for diabetes and weight loss — Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Zepbound (tirzepatide), respectively — created and timed the commercials for Hollywood’s biggest night of the year.

The company’s 30-second Oscar-themed ad, called “Big Night,” takes aim at people inside and outside of Hollywood, but mostly in Hollywood and showbiz, who have been lapping up the drugs for aesthetic, non-medical purposes.

xtalks.com continued:

Novo Nordisk’s GLP-1 diabetes drug Ozempic (semaglutide) seemingly sparked the weight loss frenzy in Hollywood and beyond after it was found the injection had weight loss as a side effect.

This led people to seek it off-label for cosmetic weight loss, a phenomenon many say is partly to blame for the current shortages of both Novo and Lilly’s GLP-1 drugs. This has sparked criticism as those who need the medicines to manage their type 2 diabetes or obesity are facing challenges in accessing them. Novo’s weight loss version of Ozempic is branded Wegovy (semaglutide).

Lilly issued an open letter ahead of the event in which the company stated its (GLP-1) drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound “are indicated for the treatment of serious diseases” and “are not approved for — and should not be used for — cosmetic weight loss.”

Lilly said it doesn’t endorse use of the medications “outside of a medicine’s FDA-approved indication.”

At this year’s Oscars, Lilly unveiled its “Healthy Skeptic” commercial campaign with the theme:

Real medicine doesn’t need your faith…tested medicine doesn’t need your faith…trialed medicine doesn’t need your faith…approved medicine doesn’t need your faith. Be a healthy skeptic.

If it’s not clear to you, compounded drugs are part of Lilly’s target.

MM+M said:

The marketing push underscores Lilly’s efforts to further define itself as a reliable developer and distributor of its approved weight loss drugs — Mounjaro and Zepbound — by contrasting them to compounded GLP-1s that are not regulated by the FDA.

“Rather than comply with the law, compounders have raised nearly identical, meritless challenges to FDA’s decisions resolving the tirzepatide and semaglutide shortages — all to continue profiting from the mass production of risky unapproved knockoffs that threaten the health and safety of Americans,” Lilly said in a statement.

Novo Nordisk has had its own “Check Before You Inject” ad campaign targeted at compounded drugs.

A friend of mine wondered “Why do they even need to spend these obscene amounts of money on ads to begin with?”

I think it’s really quite simple: it’s about the money to be made in this market. Estimates for the potential of the GLP-1 drug are skyrocketing - one recent estimate predicted $126 billion in sales by 2029.

There are lawsuits flying around, Congressional investigations, battles among GLP-1 drug Big Pharma companies, battles between Big Pharma companies and the compounding companies.

Comments left online after Lilly’s “Healthy Skeptic” video on YouTube are interesting:

• “It's like watching the two worst people you know fighting each other.”

• “The overwhelming amount of available research dollars are invested to produce profit, not in the interest of unbiased science. This is why there are orphan diseases with no treatment and why non profitable options are seldom researched. As this commercial promotes, being a healthy skeptic is valuable. That including being skeptical of the why behind the research.”

• “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah”

• “What percentage of scientific papers could not be reproduced in follow-up trials again? Just admit you don't know what you're doing either. Trusting you is no better than trusting a random podcast.”

It could be a hard sell.

Especially if taxpayers read the article posted by The Lever.

Addendum on March 22: See this story in the Daily Mail:

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