Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic kicked off the GLP-1 craze when it launched in 2018 for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. For years, the Danish pharma giant held onto its crown as the dominant player in the GLP-1 drug market. But a prolonged shortage and increasing competition have made 2025 a much rougher year for the company.
Now, Novo Nordisk is rolling out an ad campaign that reunites actors Justin Long and John Hodgman, as it looks to expand the market for its blockbuster diabetes drug ahead of patent expirations around the world.
The campaign riffs on Apple’s iconic mid-2000s ads, which featured Long and Hodgman as anthropomorphic versions of a laid-back Mac and a stuffy PC, respectively.
This time around, Long plays Ozempic, while Hodgman takes on the role of rival GLP-1 diabetes drugs. The ads take a very different approach from the traditional Big Pharma commercials viewers are used to seeing.
In the first spot, the two face off in a trivia game that informs viewers that Ozempic is the only GLP-1 drug for diabetes that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reduce the risk of worsening chronic kidney disease. Long ends the commercial by calmly reading through the drug’s extensive safety information.
Viewers will start seeing the ads today across digital channels, including social media and video streaming services.
Ozempic is a once-weekly injectable medication used to help regulate blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes. After its launch, the drug also became widely known for its weight-loss effects, which led Novo Nordisk to introduce Wegovy, a separate brand approved specifically for weight loss.
It’s worth noting that the new campaign is explicitly focused on Ozempic, not Wegovy.
The booming popularity of Ozempic and Wegovy helped turn Novo Nordisk into the 12th most valuable company in the world by market capitalization in March 2024. But a shortage, which opened the door to cheaper, off-brand alternatives, along with growing competition from Eli Lilly, maker of the rival diabetes drug Mounjaro, sent Novo Nordisk shares sliding last year.
Amid the downturn, longtime CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen announced in May that he would be leaving the company. Today, Novo Nordisk has slipped to roughly 55th place globally by market cap, while Eli Lilly remains near the top at 13th.
The new ad campaign is aimed at expanding the market for Ozempic as key patents begin to expire, ushering in even more competition. While the core U.S. patent for semaglutide, the active ingredient behind Ozempic, does not expire until the next decade, patent protections in China and Canada are already lapsing this year.
“Because in a number of markets we have lost exclusivity this year, we will get competition. And when you have a very high market share, competition will take some of that share away. We need to focus on the market expansion,” Novo Nordisk CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar said at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference last week, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Novo Nordisk is betting that expansion can come from emphasizing Ozempic’s other FDA-approved uses, including its cardiovascular health benefits.
But it remains to be seen whether this kind of campaign can really move the needle yet in a market where patients often don’t have much say at all, and end up taking whichever drugs their doctor prescribes and their insurance is willing to pay for.