Novo Nordisk's John Kuckelman Talks Eli Lilly Obesity Drug Ads

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Dani Burger** (0:07)
Isabelle, let's turn back to one of this morning's top headlines. And Novo Nordisk is suing Eli Lilly, claiming that Lilly's advertising for its blockbuster obesity shot ZepBound and diabetes injection Monjaro is misleading. Novo says that Lilly's ad campaigns relate on outdated weight loss comparisons. Eli Lilly, we are out to the company, but they have yet to respond to the claims. Joining us now is John Kuckelman, Group General Counsel at Novo Nordisk. John, thank you very much for joining us this morning. And look, before the court, you have to present this argument, not necessarily that what they presented is false, but it's factually true, but misleading. That's a bit difficult to do. So what sort of evidence, surveys and otherwise are you bringing to the court showing that consumers were actually misled by this ad and Novo suffered as a result of it?

**John Kuckelman** (0:55)
Good morning and thank you very much for having us this morning. This is an incredibly important story, and we're very pleased that you're covering it. This is not a complicated case. What Lilly is doing with its advertising campaign is taking the highest dose of its medicine and comparing it to a lower dose of the Novo medicine. Then it is deceiving the people who see these campaigns into believing that the Lilly drug is greatly superior to the Novo drug.
So it's not terribly complicated. They're using an old outdated study that is a head-to-head study, which is no longer current. And if they were using current data, it paints a very different picture.

**Dani Burger** (1:38)
Got it. So John, again, the question is, do you have the evidence that consumers were actually misled or you suffered harm? What sort of argument are you gonna bring to the court in terms of actual things that you can glom onto that show that people were actually misled by this?

**John Kuckelman** (1:54)
We do, and what we will show first is that it's obviously misleading. Just on the face of the advertising campaign, it is a misleading campaign. But we also have taken the time over the past couple of months to gather evidence so that we can show that consumers actually have been deceived.

**Isabelle Lee** (2:12)
So Novo is asking the court to stop the ads and require corrective advertising. What outcome would you like to see, John? Do you want the ads pulled out altogether? Do you want a disclaimer, or would the team be happy with an apology? What is the outcome that would be the best in your view?

**John Kuckelman** (2:28)
So the only outcome and the only right thing to do is to pull these advertisements and to pull them this morning. These advertisements are deceiving and they need to be pulled. So we've asked the court for an injunction requiring Lilly to stop these advertisements.
But I also, I would compare it to if you pollute the water and then you stop polluting the water, that's not good enough. You have to clean up. You've created a mess and you have to clean that mess up. So we also need Lilly to issue corrective advertising so that the millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who have seen these campaigns get the truth as opposed to the deceptive message that's in these messages.

**Dani Burger** (3:07)
And I just do want to reiterate to our viewers that we have reached out to Lilly. They have yet to respond to your claims, John. So in this, and you mentioned this at the start, that they're using a head-to-head trial, which you see as old. You have newer, higher dose Wegovy that is more effective. But the FDA itself discourages in advertisements from using cross-trial comparisons. What do you say to that, that that would be a problem within itself if Eli Lilly were to make an advertisement, or Novo Nordisk, for example, choosing two drugs that haven't had a head-to-head comparison study?

**John Kuckelman** (3:41)
You're absolutely right. There is no head-to-head study of the highest dose of ZetBound and the highest dose of Wegovy. That doesn't excuse then using an old study that shows the highest dose of ZetBound compared to a lower dose of Wegovy. Our 7.2-milligram dosage of Wegovy was approved in March of 2026
And there is no head-to-head study. So what you really are required to do if you want to make any kind of a claim under these circumstances, you should look at the two most parallel clinical trials of these dosages. And if you do that, and those studies exist, they are randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies. And if you look at those studies, what you will find is that under the highest dose of ZetBound, the average weight loss was 48 pounds.