Something strange is happening in the snack aisle. Quiet, almost imperceptible: like someone’s turned down the volume on appetite. Sales curves flatten, impulse buys twitch, categories built on craving suddenly feel exposed. It’s not a recession. It’s not a scandal. It’s a needle.
Ozempic – along with its metabolic cousins Wegovy and Mounjaro – has slipped into the bloodstream of culture, and it’s not just reshaping waistlines. It’s reshaping behaviour. And in a world where marketing has long relied on behavioural nudges, that’s a problem. Because what happens when the consumer stops taking the bait?
These drugs aren’t fringe anymore. What began as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes is now a billion-dollar juggernaut, handed out to the affluent and aspirational like after-dinner mints. Celebrities whisper about it. Wall Street bets on it. Pharma giants smile quietly while the rest of us stare into our biscuit tins and wonder if we still want what we used to want.
Here’s the kicker: Ozempic doesn’t just dull appetite. It breaks the loop – the hunger-reward-repeat cycle that powers not only gluttony but retail, advertising, UX design, and a fair portion of modern life. The dopamine ping. The “just one more” impulse. The snack. The scroll. The cart.
And that’s the real story. Not weight loss, but want loss.
The failure of persuasion
If you’re in marketing, advertising, retail, or anything remotely dependent on persuasion, this is no longer a niche medical footnote. This is your new operating environment. One where fewer people feel the urge to click, to snack, to chase the high of the buy.
Traditional nudges – the careful choreography of scarcity, social proof, sensory stimulation, and yes, even guilt – may find themselves tiptoeing across a consumer landscape that’s suddenly immune. You can’t trigger an impulse if the impulse has been chemically severed.
And so the old tricks start to fail. The “limited time only” loses its sting. The ASMR sizzle of a burger no longer seduces. The end cap display, once engineered to perfection, now feels oddly mute. The consumers are still there, they’re just… quieter.
It’s behavioural Zombieland out there.
Marketing to appetite
For decades, we’ve marketed to appetite – literal and metaphorical. More, faster, now. But the Ozempic era is calling that bluff. It’s revealing how much of our industry is built on exploiting micro-compulsions: dopamine hits masquerading as product benefits.
This doesn’t mean it’s over. It means it’s changing. Because if the nudge no longer nudges, we need to stop whispering and start rethinking.
First: substance beats stimulation. If cravings don’t drive consumption, then clarity, value, and actual relevance must. The age of “shove it in front of them and they’ll bite” is over. You now have to earn attention – and that means mattering in ways that go beyond flavour or flash.
Second: brand as an identity anchor. When consumption loses its thrill, meaning becomes the motivator. Brands need to reconnect with values, with emotional utility, with story. Not every product can sell desire anymore. But every brand can stand for something: comfort, control, rebellion, rest. In a world where bodies change, identity becomes the new battleground.
And third: design for friction, not just flow. Marketers have spent a decade greasing the funnel. Frictionless checkouts. One-tap buys. But maybe now’s the time to introduce a little intentional resistance. Decision gates. Affirmations. Pauses that force people to reflect, not react. Because if the impulse economy is fading, the considered one might finally be within reach.
There’s also a growing responsibility question. If your brand has built itself on sugar, salt, excess, or escape, what now? What does marketing look like when guilt no longer converts? When pleasure is tempered not by restraint, but by pharmaceutical rewiring?
It’s not just food and drink that will feel the tremors. Fashion, fitness, entertainment – anything that once thrived on aspiration and dissatisfaction now faces a quieter, more autonomous consumer. They’re not “on a journey”. They’re just not hungry. And that changes everything.
It also creates space. Space for new kinds of branding – calmer, truer, slower. For storytelling that rewards presence, not panic. For loyalty that’s built not on constant stimulation, but trust. Remember that? Trust?
Ozempic won’t kill marketing. But it might burn off the fluff.
What’s left – what survives – is what matters: real connection, genuine value, meaning over manipulation. And in a world where hunger is optional, that might just be the most powerful brand advantage of all.
Jon Williams, founder & CEO of The Liberty Guild
No comments yet