Eli Lilly sells science, not shame, to prime India’s obesity & GLP-1 market

When Eli Lilly took out a front-page ad in The Times of India this New Year, it wasn’t selling a drug. At least not explicitly. Instead, the American pharma giant sold a reframing. Obesity, the ad suggested, should be understood through science rather than shame.

In the form of a letter written by an overweight woman to herself, the message urged Indians to stop guilt-tripping themselves over broken resolutions and start trusting qualified doctors.

The only call to action led readers to a disease-awareness site: ObesityIsADisease.com.

The move is a textbook example of constraint-led creativity. India bans direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines, forcing pharma brands to market adjacencies rather than products. Lilly’s campaign doesn’t mention GLP-1 drugs by name, but its intent is clear: to prime the market for a new category of weight-loss medications just as awareness and aspiration are peaking.

GLP-1 drugs, short for glucagon-like peptide-1, were developed to manage type 2 diabetes but have gained cultural cachet for their appetite-suppressing, weight-loss effects. In India, celebrity chatter and social media speculation have already done what advertising cannot. Ozempic, made by Novo Nordisk, has become shorthand for rapid weight loss, even among consumers with limited understanding of its medical use.

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Lilly wants in early. Its GLP-1 portfolio includes Mounjaro, with oral contender orforglipron waiting in the wings pending regulatory clearance. But before prescriptions can scale, perception must shift and that’s where brand storytelling comes in.

Scroll through Lilly’s India's social feeds and the strategy becomes clearer. Doctors explain obesity as a chronic disease. Actors and influencers reinforce the science-first narrative.

Lilly isn’t launching a product; it’s launching a point of view. And in a market where weight loss has long been framed as a moral failure, that repositioning may be its most powerful asset yet.