“Oh, oh, oh! Ozempic” turns five   

“Oh, oh, oh! Ozempic” turns five   

By John Kenny

Apparently, it’s the fifth anniversary of the Ozempic brand jingle “Oh, Oh, Oh Ozempic!”

To celebrate, the brand is running TikTok ads, offering people the opportunity to learn the story behind David Paton, the singer and songwriter from Pilot, the Scottish band who originally released the song “Magic” back in 1973, how the original song was recorded, his delight in the song’s success with the brand, and how great it was that Ozempic was helping so many people. 

So why is Ozempic promoting the story behind its jingle?  It’s a lesson that more in the pharmaceutical industry can learn from.

You see, modern pharma marketing has a pretty big branding problem.  Most of the time, when people see an ad, they have no idea what brand it is for.  Meta estimates that 57% of all brand campaigns end up driving volume for the category leaders.  In pharma marketing, one academic estimated that 66% of the volume lift from DTC brand campaigns studied primarily benefited other drug treatments in the category!

What’s the source of this branding problem?  For Meta, the number one reason is a lack of distinct branding that makes it easy to recognize and remember a brand.  Distinct branding or “brand assets” are those things like characters, celebrities, distinctive visual designs, and jingles, that are both well-known and instantly associated with the brand.   Visual branding devices only need to be seen briefly to be recognized. There’s no need for the audience to read or actively listen.  With melodic audio jingles, you don’t even need to be looking at the ad to recognize the brand, and, better yet, our brains are hard-wired to remember melodies.  One study found that sonic brand cues in advertising were more than seven times more effective than logos and taglines in driving successful brand attention. 

So, if you have a unique and famous brand jingle, like Ozempic, you can publicize the story behind that jingle, driving greater brand attribution in your brand campaign.

With more and more digital media moving towards full screen, audio-on formats, like TikTok and Instagram’s Reels, jingles will increasingly be available not just to brands with big TV budgets but to any brand trying to build their brand in digital.  Moving forward we can expect more brands in the pharma space to borrow from Ozempic’s success and create their own brand jingles.

John Kenny is a brand strategist and big thinker with more than 20 years of global marketing experience, having worked in Europe, Asia and the Americas on both the market research side with C&R Research and on the client side with Diageo Europe. He is known for countless innovations in strategic planning, including the use of behavioral economics in brand building, the application of nontraditional data in insight development, and an approach to creative testing that leverages real consumer insights in real time.