Semaglutide (Shanxi Jiayuan)

France’s drug regulator fined Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly over obesity awareness campaigns it said crossed into indirect promotion. As the promotion battle between old rivals Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly heats up, regulators in France are reminding the world’s two biggest obesity drugmakers what happens when promotion goes too far.Pharma companies are not allowed to market prescription drugs directly to patients in Europe, but they can run awareness campaigns around the diseases they treat.In these cases, however, both companies appear to have crossed the line, as regulators determined their campaigns amounted to indirect promotion of prescription treatments in violation of the country’s rules.First up is Novo. The French drug regulator, Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des Produits de Santé (ANSM), took issue with several of Novo’s obesity campaigns across the country and online last year.This included a campaign in Paris in 2025 just before the summer featuring the line, “I’ve decided to act for myself & for my health,” which the ANSM said was “highlighted with, in the background, an image depicting overweight people, smiling again at the idea of ‘taking action.’”In October, the company also posted on social media the slogan, “More effort, less result? Menopause changes the game. Your gynaecologist can support you,” alongside an image of a woman entering menopause.There was also a video with the tagline, “Changing your perspective is already progress” and “Obesity? Overweight? Visit audeladupoids.fr,” which the regulator said circulated on social media, “featuring a woman in her forties who was overweight, explaining to the general public how she decided to take action, notably by discussing the issue with her doctor.” The regulator said these messages came “within a broader context of misuse of the GLP-1 analog class, which has received significant media attention and been the subject of numerous communications from health authorities.”The ANSM took issue with the fact that the messaging focused on medication as a response to obesity without sufficiently emphasizing other approaches, such as diet and exercise. Given the high public awareness of GLP-1 drugs, the regulator said the campaigns were likely to be understood as promoting prescription treatments, even without naming specific products.In France, Wegovy is prescribed as a second-line treatment for obesity, not for people with a lower body mass index (BMI) or those who simply “have kilos to lose,” as the regulator put it. Because the campaigns did not clearly define who these medicines are intended for, Novo was fined €783,838.20 ($919,688) for violating the Public Health Code.Novo was also hit for similar promotions tied to its other injectable obesity drug, Saxenda, receiving a separate €1 million ($1.17 million) fine for those breaches.Lilly was also fined for breaching the country’s drug promotion rules. Last year, just before the summer, it publicized a disease awareness campaign through posters in six major French cities—“notably in the metro, in the press, and on social media,” according to the French regulator—which Lilly has described as titled “Obesity is a sick person’s problem,” according to comments reported by Le Monde.The regulator said that, as with Novo, the widespread recognition of these obesity treatments meant the campaign was likely to encourage members of the public—regardless of their weight or BMI—to seek out prescription options.“This communication campaign, by focusing solely on medications indicated for the treatment of obesity without naming them, therefore tends to encourage the general public, regardless of their weight and body mass index (BMI), to use the products in the Mounjaro range.”The ANSM fined Lilly €108,766 ($127,591) for the breach.The enforcement action comes amid a new branding battle between Lilly and Novo in the U.S.Just last week, Novo announced a major branding shift for its semaglutide franchise, dropping the Rybelsus name in the U.S. in favor of “Ozempic pill,” while renaming its Ozempic injectable “Ozempic injection.”Earlier this year, the company also updated its obesity franchise branding to “Wegovy pill” for its oral candidate and “Wegovy injection” for the pen version.At the same time, Lilly has launched its newly approved GLP-1 drug Foundayo in the U.S., based on the ingredient orforglipron, which differs from the compound used in its obesity and diabetes drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.