• by Les Luchter , 9 hours ago

Novo Nordisk’s upcoming :90 Super Bowl spot for its groundbreaking Wegovy weight-loss pill may well represent the largest single ad buy in TV history.

The Super Bowl commands the highest prices of any TV advertising, and per USAToday’s "Ad Meter,” NBC this year has charged a record $8 million to $10 million for 30 seconds of time, which could put Novo Nordisk’s buy somewhere close to the $30 million mark.

While :90 Super Bowl spots are rare, others have run in the past, most recently Amazon, with this this dog-focused ad in 2023. Other examples this decade have included another Amazon spot in 2022, General Motors in 2021 and Google in 2020. But, even in 2023, per USA Today, 30 seconds of Super Bowl time sold for a relatively low $7 million.

Debuting sometime in the third quarter on Sunday, the :90 Wegovy ad is part of a larger NBC buy that will also see the ad running during the Winter Olympics, with a :75 cutdown in the can and possibly a :60 one as well, Ed Cinca, Novo Nordisk’s senior vice president of marketing and patient solutions, tells Marketing Daily.

“Every year during the Super Bowl, there’s a new opportunity for a brand to purchase the most expensive spot in TV history — but the length of the ad is just part of the equation," iSpot Brand Solutions Director Tyler Bobin tells Marketing Daily. “Placement of an airing can be crucial for a brand’s performance. Ads that air in earlier pods are typically worth more, especially right before halftime, while attention can decline considerably during blowout games, which shows the value of buying on second-by-second ad impressions.”

The cost seems worth it for Novo Nordisk, which is making its Super Bowl debut, as the Wegovy pill -- the first oral GLP-1 available -- already seems to be eating into the market share momentum of its competitor, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. Lilly itself plans to launch an oral  GLP-1 in Q2 this year 

In the month since the Wegovy pill’s launch on January 5, it has already garnered over 200,000 users, notes Cinca.

Coming on the heels of FDA approval in December, Axios reports that one analyst -- David Risinger of Leerink -- has called the rollout “the fastest drug launch ever.”

“This uptake is over twice that of any prior anti-obesity drug launch in the U.S.,” Novo Nordisk Executive Vice President U.S. Operations Dave Moore told analysts during a Wednesday earnings call. Most prescriptions for the pill, he said, appear to be for patients new to GLP-1s, “suggesting the market is expanding.”

Bringing in new users through awareness of the pill is the main aim of the upcoming ad thrust, acknowledges Cinca. A key target, he says, is people who have been “sitting on the sidelines” waiting for an alternative to GLP-1 injections.  “A lot of patients are either intimidated by or fearful of an injection, and others view it as perhaps too aggressive a therapy.”

Coming on the heels of “Live Lighter” ads for the Wegovy pill, which ran during the Golden Globes and Grammy Awards, Cinca says the Super Bowl and Olympics buys are part of  Novo Nordisk’s strategy of focusing on “big tentpole events” for the brand’s marketing.

“We will continue pushing this through and promoting it,” Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told analysts.”We will basically make sure that we’ll do our utmost to make this pill a success.”

Lilly executives themselves had nothing but praise for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy rollout during their own earnings call on Wednesday,

“We’ re very encouraged by what we’re seeing with oral Wegovy,” Ken Custer, Lilly’s president of cardiometabolic health, told analysts, “as it validates our belief that there’s a substantial number of people with overweight and obesity who’ve been sitting on the sidelines waiting for an oral option. It looks like these are mostly new starts. That means it’s expanding the market, and that’s good news for Lilly.”

Novo Nordisk, in addition to the Super Bowl/Olympics buy itself, paid to assemble a group of six celebrities for the new Wegovy pill commercial. Led by comedian Kenan Thompson, the group includes DJ Khaled and actors Danielle Brooks, Ana Gasteyer, John C. Reilly and Danny Trejo.

Together, they allow the brand to “be inclusive holistically for all of our patients,” says Cinca, “and that cuts across multiple demographic categories,” including age ranges and ethnicities.

Four of the stars -- Thompson, Khaled, Brooks, and Gasteyer -- previewed Sunday’s ad with teasers earlier this week.

Agencies involved with Wegovy’s Super Bowl/Olympics ad effort include M+C Saatchi (creative), WPP’s CMI (paid media), Starpower (talent), Alexander Health (social) and FleishmanHillard (earned media).