Tomorrow's Business Today
The PR implications of Ozempic
The fat jab economy has come of age.
Which means business hacks are looking for angles that are about more than just the health gains/risks from injecting your stomach with semaglutides.
Worldpanel had a good hit today, based on a reassuringly large sample of 11,500 households.
It finds that use of Ozempic and the rest has tripled in two years. More than 6% of households have at least one user.
From its data it extrapolates that supermarket sales are down £780m, which suggests small appetites could eat into grocery profits.
It’s not quite clear how they got to that number, but they’re a respectable source.
It’s not like business pages haven’t written about the weight jabs yet.
But most of the coverage by far has been for the consumer pages about how wonderful/awful these drugs are.
If the reality is that before long most of us are going to be taking some form of jab or pill to keep the pounds off, then the implications for business are huge.
The fat-jab folk will still buy things of course, but what they buy will change radically.
Worldpanel reports falling sales of crisps and higher sales of mouthwash (the jabs make your breath smell, apparently).
There is scope to have a reasonable amount of fun here, but I think tone is important.
The phrase “fat jab” is too pejorative for The Independent, for example.
It doesn’t want to be rude to its readers.
Other publications may be more relaxed about it.
It seems like half of all businesses are repositioning themselves as AI companies. Perhaps the other half will reposition around health and wellness.
If AI is a jobs killer, does that make Ozempic a job saver? Since we will all be healthier, won’t that increase the range of work we could conceivably do?
Pubs are already closing at the rate of two a day. Could the jabs finally kill off the Great British boozer?
If the medication does lead to lower sales of food, beer, chocolate etc, will the trade bodies lobby against it being available on the NHS to almost anyone?
And if we are going to live longer thanks to a combination of AI and drugs, what does that mean for our pensions?
Over to you.
Please send candidates for press release of the day to:
Press release of the day
Over 80 of Britain’s biggest retail CEOs have told the Prime Minister that government policies are making it harder to hire young people.
Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium (BRC), warned that retailers are being priced out of hiring young people as government taxes and red tape push up the cost of entry-level jobs.
Stories that will keep rolling
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