Return of the Mac

Novo Nordisk is struggling to differentiate Ozempic from other GLP-1s. It's becoming like Kleenex or Weed Eater, a brand name that has become synonymous with an entire category. As Novo Nordisk's chief executive says in this Wall Street Journal article, that is the curse of a leader.

The latest Ozempic campaign is called "There's Only One Ozempic."  And the two brand faces are the guys from Apple's wildly successful "Get a Mac" campaign that ran from 2006-2009 -- Justin Long and John Hodgman.

In that campaign, Long was a metaphor for the Mac: cool, cutting-edge, and modern. Meanwhile, Hodgman was a metaphor for how Apple wanted people to perceive a PC: older, dumpy, and kind of clueless.

What I like about this campaign is that it tries very hard to be different from typical direct-to-consumer (DTC) communication. FDA regulations make it tough to really be truly unique or overly clever in that space, but Novo Nordisk is doing its best. The Ozempic theme song is certainly a distinctive brand asset and, as Hodgman says, it is very different from stereotypical DTC messaging, which features way too many people dancing in fields or driving down the Pacific Coast Highway.

There are three things I am not sure about:

• Does the average consumer remember these guys and the characters they played?  The magic of this new campaign seems to hinge largely on that.

• The characters don't seem to metaphorically represent brands/products as strongly as they did in the Mac campaign.

• Personally, I keep getting distracted by how old Long looks. Granted, no one looks like they did 20 years ago except for Dolly Parton and the Galapagos tortoise. But his character back then embodied youth, style, and vitality. In this campaign, he's got the dad bod and the old man jeans—he doesn't look dramatically different from Hodgman's character. 

Do these concerns mask the message the campaign is trying to get across?