With the advent of powerful GLP-1 medications from Novo and Eli Lilly, the conversation is shifting around obesity’s status as a chronic disease, as is the understanding of how tackling weight can trigger a multitude of downstream health benefits.
At the same time, however, a confluence of factors, from social media buzz to the proliferation of a compounding pharmacy cottage industry, has fundamentally changed the way many patients seek access to drugs like Novo’s Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound.
More aware and information-armed than ever, patients’ appetite for GLP-1s means drugmakers looking to ride the current and next-gen weight loss waves must fundamentally rethink their marketing playbooks and adapt to a changing commercial landscape that may soon extend well beyond hormone receptor agonists.
That’s the read of the room according to Kristin Ciriello Pothier, U.S. and Americas region life sciences sector leader and global deal advisory and strategy leader for healthcare and life sciences at “Big Four” accounting firm KPMG.
As the commercial landscape for obesity treatments has evolved, it now “truly meshes consumer health with real-life therapeutics,” she said in a recent interview.
The successes of the GLP-1 class for chronic weight management “introduced consumer overlay over a historically physician-driven therapeutic area,” Pothier explained, noting that despite the potency of the drugs, popular interest meant the GLP-1s “almost were taken out of physicians’ hands” and placed into those of the consumer.
The magnitude of consumer sway in the market is unprecedented in the pharmaceutical realm, Pothier said, noting that one obvious driving factor is the ubiquity of social media in today’s world.
Meanwhile, the swift rise of consumer-driven platforms offering treatments for sexual health, hair loss and other conditions through companies like Hims & Hers and Ro, along with direct-to-consumer diagnostics that emerged even earlier, has made the virtual pharmacy an increasingly popular avenue for patients to access their medications in recent years.
What that means for the branded industry, in Pothier’s estimation, is that this “has totally changed the way that pharmaceutical companies are thinking about their commercial launches and their branding overall.”
One point to consider is that patients are also coming into treatment conversations with a stronger understanding of what they want and expect from a medicine, Pothier explained.
Providers, too, need to be more knowledgeable about dosing and how GLP-1s are being used in actual practice, she added, flagging trends like microdosing. This also requires knowledge-sharing by drugmakers so that providers aren’t “pushed out of the loop” in turn, Pothier said.
Ultimately, figuring out how to get healthcare providers back into GLP-1 conversations will be critical to the success of next-generation launches, she figures, given that the current reality means patients can seek compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs through online platforms and other outlets, sometimes after completing an online questionnaire.
That is “very concerning” to the pharma companies themselves, no doubt, and they should in turn make a push to ensure that marketing and maintenance campaigns remain a focus of commercial launches to retain market share, she added. Whereas traditional launches might have been able to scale back marketing pushes after some time, that's likely not a luxury branded GLP-1 players can afford in the current commercial environment.
When it comes to the drug class and maintaining both market share and public attention, “it’s still a competitive race even a couple of years in,” Pothier said.
Another catalyst is patients’ growing understanding that GLP-1s can do more than help them lose weight, with benefits that extend to other measures of cardiometabolic health.
“The consumer-driven parts of that have awakened more and more patients to take care of their health,” Pothier said. “However, at the same time, that means that the pharmaceutical companies really have to be thoughtful about their approach.”
“It’s not just the commercials at halftime at the Super Bowl,” Pothier said of the evolving landscape, noting that there is now a “constant awakening and back and forth with the consumer and the provider.”
That holistic view of health, along with a desire to meet consumers where they are, helped shape the rebrand that Wegovy and Ozempic maker Novo announced last month, adopting the new mantra that "lasting health starts now."
Reflecting on the change, Novo CEO Mike Doustdar told Fierce that the tagline “also opens up the room for us to explore more,” and in particular “where the future will take us scientifically.” He also noted that the move comes out of a desire to respond to how patients see themselves, which is often more nuanced than seeing themselves simply as a consumer or a person managing a chronic disease.
“[I]nstead of getting into a judgment call of what to call our customers or those we serve—patients or consumers—let’s talk about health,” Doustdar said.
As for capturing the holistic appetite of GLP-1 patients, drugmakers ought to be partnering with other companies to provide a “total solution” for patients, according to KPMG's Pothier, who pointed to additional treatments like supplements for nausea and hair loss medications that are ramping up in popularity alongside incretins, not to mention resultant shifts in consumer behavior related to areas like food, snacking and even clothing purchases.
The ability to tailor care on a personal level will likely be one of the biggest strengths of the next slate of commercial GLP-1 winners. Differences in titration that account for unique patient needs could be a major boon for GLP-1 makers, and delivery methods and supply chain preparedness will be crucial too, Pothier said.
Novo has apparently heard that call.
At the company's Capital Markets Day in September, Doustdar admitted that "'consumers' ... was not in our vocabulary last time we met," but with the boom in interest in the GLP-1 market, Novo is now unveiling plans for what it calls a "Consumer Rx" segment.
"This is where serious condition prescription medication meets incredibly strong consumer demand,” he said during the Novo event.
Earlier this year, Doustdar had also hinted in an interview with Bloomberg that Novo would be open to exploring increasingly interrelated, appearance-facing therapeutic areas like skincare and hair loss.
Metabolic medicine archrival Eli Lilly may adopt a similar tack, too, with Endpoints News last week flagging a new job posting from the Indianapolis Big Pharma that highlighted aesthetic health as an emerging and strategically significant area for the company.
Surging interest in fields such as hair loss has also given a recent lift to companies like Veradermics, which is working on an oral reformulation of the molecule behind Rogaine and whose CEO expects similar consumer-tinged trends to play out, buoyed by the recent precedent set by GLP-1s.