<div id="readability-page-1"><div id="article-body-row"> <div> If last year’s pharma ad showing during the Super Bowl drove buzzy conversation and a touch of controversy, the lasting impression pharma marketers made on consumers during Sunday’s Super Bowl LX took something of a different tone. Comprised mainly of promotions for GLP-1 weight loss drugs and disease awareness campaigns, this year’s lineup of pharma Super Bowl ads could speak to a broader trend that moves away from a clinical focus, according to analysts. “This year’s Super Bowl ads weren’t focused on driving immediate conversion, but on building trust and cultural relevance at scale,” Heather Coyle, president at Triggers brand growth consultancy, told Fierce Pharma Marketing via email. “As clinical differentiation narrows over time, these investments signal that pharma now sees brand as a long-term competitive moat rather than a nice-to-have.” To put it another way, this year’s Super Bowl spots were “less about selling medicine and more about making people feels seen, safe and ready to act,” the exec noted, with healthcare brands “increasingly recognizing that behavior change starts with emotional permission, not information or clinical data alone.” TV outcomes company EDO took a closer look at the 97 different brands that were promoted during the Super Bowl across 20 different categories, finding that although pharma brands were “all over the Super Bowl,” not all of them &#34;ran up the score.” Pharma ads stole 9% of overall engagement, EDO found in its engagement calculator. The industry’s slice was comparable to the 8% driven by the auto industry and the 12% earned by snacks and candy within the consumer-packaged goods sector, while AI services took the most share overall out of the individual industries. Out of the six pharma ad campaigns spotlighted by EDO, Novo Nordisk’s star-studded Super Bowl debut highlighting its Wegovy pill was the only to push a specific medicine. Despite the trend away from product-specific messaging pointed out by Triggers, the ad still earned the 10th spot out of EDO’s ranking of the most effective Super Bowl ads across all industries. The 90-second ad for Novo’s blockbuster obesity med Wegovy in its new oral formulation included a clutch of celebrities, from “Saturday Night Live” stars Kenan Thompson and Ana Gasteyer to musician DJ Khaled and actors Danielle Brooks, Danny Trejo and John C. Reilly. The Novo ad aired during the game’s fourth quarter. In measuring its TV-driven engagement, EDO found that it generated 3.7 times more engagement than the median ad at the game, making it the pharma category’s big winner and slotting it in between pre-kickoff spots from Invest America and Paramount Pictures’ &#34;Scream 7&#34; promotion on the overall rankings. The ad follows on the momentum of Novo’s early January launch of its Wegovy pill and marked the Danish drugmaker’s first-ever Super Bowl ad, a key component of the company’s “really dramatic go-to-market acceleration” for the product, Novo’s senior VP of marketing and patient solutions Ed Cinca told Fierce Pharma Marketing in an interview earlier this month. Joining Novo in representing Big Pharma at the big game were Boehringer Ingelheim and Novartis, each of which tapped familiar faces to urge viewers toward disease screenings. Boehringer Ingelheim’s disease awareness campaign featured acclaimed actors Octavia Spencer and Sofía Vergara joining forces for an action film-inspired commercial with a buddy-comedy twist that saw the duo on a mission to “detect the SOS.” It encouraged viewers to ask their physicians about a urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (uACR) screening to pick up on signals that could point to heart or kidney risks. The 30-second spot was ranked 23rd for engagement overall, per EDO, ranking above Novartis and below Novo on the pharma-specific rankings and scoring 2.1 times more engagement than the median ad at the game. Novartis’ Super Bowl LX presence, meanwhile, included a roster of current and former NFL tight ends signing on to the company’s “Relax your Tight End” messaging in a campaign that directed viewers to a prostate cancer blood test, marking its second-straight Super Bowl ad after last year's breast cancer awareness push. Although the 2026 Novartis ad showed up 75th on EDO’s ranking, TV ad measurement company iSpot separately pinned a likeability score of 643 on the spot, determining it to be the highest-scoring of its pharma peers on both attention and watchability rankings. Nearly 30% of viewers described the prostate cancer screening awareness ad’s message as the “single best thing” about the commercial, with one male in the 21-to-35 age group specifically praising that “some of the biggest tight ends in football history are all supporting this movement,” and commenting that “more men need to be screened for prostate cancer and I love the awareness they are trying to spread,” as an iSpot spokesperson shared with Fierce Pharma Marketing. On that note, Boehringer’s contribution came away with the second-highest likeability out of its pharma peers, though it only ranked 5% above pharma norm, according to the spokesperson. Around 28% of viewers specifically pointed to the actors involved as the “single best thing” about the ad. Beyond the Big Pharmas, telehealth companies Hims &amp; Hers and Ro both aired their own promotions during the game. Hims &amp; Hers’ used its spot—featuring rapper and actor Common and the tagline “Rich people live longer”—to highlight the U.S.’s wealth gap and health gap, claiming that with Hims &amp; Hers, average people can also access diagnostic testing and weight loss treatments with “no connections required,” as Common put it. The ad nabbed the 19th slot on EDO’s engagement ranking, putting it behind Novo’s Wegovy pill promotion and equating to 2.2 times more engagement than the median ad at the game. The two companies have recently been locked in a heated spitfire as Hims &amp; Hers’ plan to launch a knockoff version of Novo’s Wegovy pill was unraveled by rebukes from both Novo and the FDA over the weekend, ultimately leaving Hims to back off the plan. Ro, meanwhile, which sells GLP-1 meds such as Wegovy, utilized a real GLP-1 user in champion tennis star Serena Williams to promote its services. Ro’s big game debut featuring Williams landed directly below Novartis at 76th on EDO’s ranking. That also placed Ro's ad ahead of Eli Lilly's. Lilly just barely cracked the list at No. 78 with its 60-second “Watch This” ad, which showcased confident Zepbound users appearing out and about after losing weight by using the drug. <h3>Regular season winners</h3>Although Lilly’s Zepbound ad didn’t win out on effectiveness during the Super Bowl, EDO has found that the brand took a starring role during the regular NFL season. In a separate analysis earlier this month, EDO determined that Lilly’s Zepbound promotion was a whopping 519% more effective than the average pharma brand marketing during the 2025-26 regular NFL season, while Ro’s weight control ads were 246% more effective. Lilly’s “Bridge V2” Zepbound ad, specifically, was 439% more effective than others during the season. That topped a separate EDO list of ad effectiveness that also ranked a Regeneron Dupixent campaign, Ro’s Serena Williams collab, Dexcom’s Nick Jonas endorsement for its G7 diabetes wearable and Johnson &amp; Johnson’s Caplyta promotion as the top five most effective ads during the football season. As it turns out, those that opted to push ads during NFL broadcasts fared particularly well, as pharma ads that played on game days were 104% more effective than the average drug ad that ran on primetime broadcast and cable, EDO found. Not only did they pack a bigger punch than last year—with pharma ads as a whole 9% more effective than last year’s football season, per EDO—but pharma marketers showed out more for this season than last, with pharma brands airing ads a total of 332 times, 13% more than the previous year. To put it a different way, those numbers mean that a drug advertiser would need to air their ad 69 times on the average broadcast or cable primetime program to pull the same total impact as a single pharma ad would during the 2025-26 NFL regular season, EDO noted. </div> </div></div>

Novo Nordisk's Wegovy ad topped the pharma engagement rankings during Super Bowl LX, focusing on building trust rather than immediate sales. The ad featured celebrities and generated 3.7 times more engagement than the median ad, marking a significant debut for the company. Other pharma brands like Boehringer Ingelheim and Novartis also participated, with varying engagement results. Overall, pharma ads captured 9% of total engagement, comparable to other industries, indicating a shift in marketing strategies towards emotional connection and long-term brand building.

Novo’s Wegovy spot tops pharma Super Bowl engagement rankings