Ozempic's Bitterest Side Effect: Corporate Overpromise
Editor’s Note: This commentary reflects the views of the author and examines Novo Nordisk’s investor communications through the lens of expectations, credibility and corporate reputation.
Novo Nordisk has discovered an ailment neither Ozempic nor Wegovy can cure: disappointed investors.
At the company's Capital Markets Day on September 21, Novo laid out ambitious plans for its future, including new drug launches, pipeline growth and acquisitions. Investors responded skeptically. That skepticism matters because investor confidence isn't a mood you can improve with a reassuring speech. It is a judgment earned when a company does what it said it would do.
Novo makes important medicines. Its scientists deserve credit for work that has changed lives. That makes the company's credibility especially valuable and makes careless promises especially costly. When executives allow ambition to sound like inevitability, they invite investors to price in a future that has not arrived.
I have spent my career in public relations, and I have watched this mistake become almost a corporate reflex. A promising development is announced as a breakthrough. A target becomes a near certainty. Every caveat is sanded away until the public hears a guarantee nobody was entitled to make. Then, when reality intrudes, executives appear astonished that anyone believed them.
In my new book, Authentic PR, I argue that overpromising and underdelivering is among the most destructive habits in business. The damage is not confined to one disappointing quarter. It changes how people hear everything a company says afterward.
Research on expectations and satisfaction helps explain why: performance is judged against what people were led to expect. Tell investors to anticipate a moon landing, and they will not applaud a safe arrival in Cleveland. Brand research reaches a related conclusion: credibility helps people make decisions under uncertainty. Squander it, and each future claim faces a higher burden of proof.
Novo's talk of acquisitions, new drug launches and growth years from now may reflect a sensible strategy. It may even prove brilliantly right. But shareholders are entitled to ask a blunt question: Why should we trust today's projections more than yesterday's? A forecast is an ambition with a number attached. It becomes an achievement only when the number is delivered.
Acknowledging investor concerns is a start. The harder step is examining whether the culture that shaped those expectations also needs to change. Executives must distinguish what they know from what they hope, state uncertainty while optimism is still fashionable, and take responsibility when expectations outrun results.
None of that requires a company to stop selling its vision. It requires the discipline to sell the truth. Investors can tolerate setbacks. The risk comes when investors perceive that a possibility has been presented as something closer to a promise.
Novo does not need a more ingenious slogan. It needs to give investors fewer reasons to doubt the next one. Promise with restraint, perform with urgency, and let the results write the press release.
