The “new year, new me” diet marketing season has a new player—weight loss drugs.

The rise of so-called GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy is taking a prominent role in new campaigns from diet plan marketers such as WeightWatchers and Noom as these companies attempt to feed the growing consumer interest in shedding pounds with a little help from weight loss drugs.

Among those making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight in 2024, 21% intended to start a new diet plan—and 10% planned to do so with the help of a GLP-1 drug, according to a December Numerator survey of more than 900 U.S. adults. 

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GLP-1s  began upending the $450 billion weight loss industry last year when celebrities started using them to lose weight. They are a class of medications that “mainly help manage blood sugar (glucose) levels in people with Type 2 diabetes” and have recently been found to help treat obesity, according to the Cleveland Clinic. They’re typically injectable drugs that can be administered with a needle and syringe at home. 

Brands including WeightWatchers and Noom formed partnerships with drug providers last year to boost their diet and nutrition plan offerings. (WeightWatchers in April finalized its acquisition of subscription telehealth company Sequence, a company whose offerings include access to clinicians who can prescribe GLP-1 drugs.) Now, those partnerships are appearing in ads during what’s often the biggest marketing season for the weight loss category.

Marketers referencing the drugs have been careful to keep the drug mentions separate from the ads for their core offerings. Experts say the reason for the separation is likely because offering access to injectable drugs is a delicate message to communicate.

“Having two separate ads allows weight management services to target the audience who might know about GLP-1 drugs with the news that their services are offering access and support while avoiding confusing people who are unaware of the drugs and consider WW or Noom to be more traditional weight loss services,” said Jenny Zegler, director, Mintel Food and Drink in an email.

Because this New Year’s season is the first time many of these companies are speaking about GLP-1s in their campaigns, creating a separate ad that includes mentions of injectable weight loss medication may have been a risk management tactic, said Marcus Collins, author of “For The Culture” and a marketing professor at the University of Michigan.

After all, the idea of injecting oneself with a drug to lose weight isn’t yet as widely accepted by society as going on a diet or increasing exercise, he said in an interview. Segmenting the GLP-1 messaging makes it so if the discourse around one ad is “problematic,” the company can pull the ad without losing its entire New Year’s campaign, Collins said. 

While new weight loss drugs may have impacted the content of seasonal diet company campaigns, spending wasn’t drastically altered. Between Dec. 26, 2022 and Jan. 5, 2023, weight loss brands spent $41.9 million on linear TV ads alone, according to iSpot. This season’s estimated spend is slightly lower, with weight loss brands (excluding pharmaceuticals) spending $39.6 million between Dec. 26, 2023 and Jan. 10, 2024. 

Below, a closer look at this season’s marketing.

WeightWatchers

“We came into what we call our January New Year’s peak season with this goal: allow us to reintroduce ourselves,” Melanie Rabino, head of global brand marketing at WeightWatchers said in a recent interview, calling the past year “transformational” for the brand. 

Specifically, she said, “we needed to shift the way people are thinking about WeightWatchers. Now, we have a portfolio of solutions across the entire weight health spectrum—so that's everything from our behavior change program to now our WeightWatchers Clinic and GLP-1 programs.”

WeightWatchers Clinic, which debuted last year, is a telehealth service that aims to help people understand if they are eligible for access to weight-loss medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration. For example, the GLP-1 Wegovy was approved by the FDA in 2021 for weight loss for those with a body mass index (BMI) of 27 or greater who have at least one weight-related ailment, or in patients with a BMI of 30 or greater.

“The WeightWatchers GLP-1 program provides tailored behavioral support for individuals already on a GLP-1 medication and was scientifically designed to help support the unique behavioral and nutritional needs one faces while on a GLP-1 journey,” Rabino said. This program also rolled out last year.

The GLP-1 program and WeightWatchers Clinic are not mentioned in new TV ads from agency of record Gut, which instead focus on the WeightWatchers points program and app.

To promote the WeightWatchers Clinic and the GLP-1 program, the brand took a much more targeted approach, using influencers, events, Reddit, content across WeightWatchers Clinic’s socials, and more, Rabino said. 

For instance, WW on Jan. 4 rented a home to host creators in the Hollywood Hills for “The GLP-1 House” where influencers on these medications came together to get educated about the WeightWatchers GLP-1 program. There was also a Dec. 30 out-of-home takeover of high-trafficked streets in New York such as Times Square, Chicago and the Atlanta airport, a Reddit AMA with a doctor, TikTok activations and experiential activations, including a coffee cart that experiential agency BMF helped create.

WeightWatchers decided to segment the marketing efforts to ensure that people who were only looking for the points program would get information about that, whereas those who might be more interested in learning about the GLP-1 program and WeightWatchers Clinic would receive that information, Rabino said.

“We didn’t have one bigger platform that spoke to all of that,” she said. “Right now, the points program is still a huge part of WeightWatchers, and it’s really our bread and butter and shining star,” and because the points program is the core of the brand, “bigger levers” including a TV campaign made sense to promote it.

Rabino said that because a lot of education is still needed to understand weight loss medications, her team wanted to make sure they promoted those offerings in a format where viewers could ask questions and have them answered—whether by WeightWatchers spokespeople at physical experiential activation, a doctor in a Reddit AMA, or by commenting on an influencer’s video.

“We wanted that two-way conversation,” she said.

Rabino declined to comment on the ad spend for this campaign. ISpot estimates that WeightWatchers spent $9.9 million on its linear TV ads alone this New Year’s season (between Dec. 26, 2023 and Jan. 10, 2024).

Noom

Digital weight loss and wellness plan Noom also took a segmented approach. Its “New Recruits” campaign rolled out in early Dec. 2023 and is set to run until mid-2024, according to a spokesperson for the brand.

While a 30-second spot about coworkers talking about Noom’s personalized plans doesn’t mention the weight loss medications that the Noom Med program can help people access, a 15-second spot that takes place in a park does. Both spots are running on linear TV, streaming TV and social media channels including Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok.

Noom Med is a “clinically managed weight loss for patients with manifestations of the disease of obesity,” Noom’s Chief of Medicine Linda Anegawa said in an email. Patients are treated by doctors and doctor-supervised nurse practitioners and treatment plans “may be supported by GLP-1s or another anti-obesity prescription when medically appropriate,” she said.

This is the first time Noom Med was integrated into a Noom TV spot, said Russell Der, creative director at Noom. “Last year, they weren't really a thing—and certainly not the year before,” Der said.

The campaign was created in-house, with Reverie working on production. Noom did not provide ad spend for the campaign. ISpot estimates that Noom spent roughly $1.7 million on linear TV ads running between Dec. 26, 2023 and Jan. 10, 2024.

Ro

Telehealth company Ro decided to do its first-ever New Year’s campaign after making a splash in the weight loss space in 2023.

Ro generated headlines this past spring for its ads in New York’s subway system touting the message “a weekly shot to lose weight.” Meant to promote Ro’s “Body Program,” which includes access to medical practitioners able to prescribe Wegovy, as well as coaching and diagnostic testing, the ads included a picture of a woman injecting herself in the stomach with a needle. 

Ro’s new campaign includes TV ads featuring “real stories from Body Program patients” as well as refreshed out-of-home advertising, said  Saman Rahmanian, co-founder and chief product officer. The New Year’s ads promote Ro’s Body Program and do not mention other aspects of its telehealth service.

“When it comes to weight loss, nothing is more powerful than hearing from someone directly about their journey. These commercials highlight the journey each patient has taken on the Body Program, and how through Ro’s support they were able to access GLP-1s to help quiet food noise and regain control to live life to the fullest,” Rahmanian said in an email. The accompanying OOH ads running in Boston’s South Station share a similar message.

The TV ads are airing on both linear and streaming TV, including during some NFL games, as well as on Hulu, Peacock, Roku and YouTube, Rahmanian said. Ro did not work with any marketing or ad agencies for the campaign, he added.

TV ads started running in late December and Ro plans to “assess the length of the campaign as we go,” Rahmanian said. Boston’s OOH campaign is set to expand into Manhattan, including OOH ads and “digital taxi tops” running in New York said Rahmanian, who declined to share ad spend for the campaign.

Nutrisystem

Nutrisystem—a diet plan that sends subscribers food and meal plan options by mail—has not integrated GLP-1s into its program. But it did run an ad that suggested injectable weight loss medications are adding confusion to the market.

An ad titled “Breakthrough: Inject” shows a series of newspaper clippings as a voiceover about how “losing weight is more confusing than ever” these days. “Eat this!” says the voiceover and one newspaper headline. “Don’t eat that … inject that!” the voiceover continues.

The ad, which debuted on Jan. 1 according to iSpot, came in addition to a dozen other Nutrisystem ads airing in the New Year's timeframe. None of the other ads mentioned injectable weight loss drugs, and instead highlighted Nutrisystem’s core program offerings such as its claim that Nutrisystem can help people lose 7 pounds in seven days, as well as the types of food people can eat on the Nutrisystem program.

Nutrisystem did not respond to Ad Age’s requests for comment on this story. ISpot estimates that between Dec. 26 2023 and Jan. 10 2024, Nutrisystem spent $10.5 million on linear TV advertising alone. It also estimated that it spent roughly $24,000 to air the “Breakthrough: Inject” spot.