The premise of a new commercial for Noom, the weight loss app that has made behavior change its particular franchise, is familiar enough to anyone who has seen a film in which the call is coming from inside the house.
In the spot, a woman celebrating her weight loss success begins hearing whispered warnings from her household devices — the television, the smart speaker, the smoke alarm, even the robotic vacuum cleaner. Their message, delivered with the sort of menace usually reserved for things that emerge from wells, is uniform: "Weight regain doesn't care."
The ad was developed by Noom's internal marketing team and directed by Nina Meredith, working with Shutterstock Studios. Rachel Mahoney, the chief brand officer at Noom, said earlier concepts involved ghostly figures delivering the tagline, but research indicated that audiences responded more strongly to the smart-home paranoia approach. (Apparently being haunted by one's Roomba tested better than being haunted by an actual ghost, which says something about the current moment.)
"The message was even clearer when the tone was heightened a little bit more," Ms. Mahoney said.
The commercial arrives as Noom continues to navigate its somewhat complicated position in the weight loss market. The company began offering GLP-1 medications through its Noom Med service in 2023, joining the rush of companies eager to participate in the Ozempic economy. But its marketing still emphasizes habit formation and coaching — the things Noom was selling before the injectable drugs became a cultural phenomenon.
That emphasis has a practical dimension. Noom reports that eleven of twelve people who begin taking GLP-1 drugs will eventually pause or stop entirely, whether because of side effects, cost, or the ordinary turbulence of life. The company's argument, rendered here in horror-movie grammar, is that behavior change remains necessary even when pharmacology is doing some of the work.
"Most people aren't thinking about stopping a GLP-1 when they're starting a GLP-1," Ms. Mahoney said.
Which may be true of most journeys, pharmaceutical or otherwise.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Noom’s Latest Ad Stokes Fears of GLP-1 Weight Rebound"