Eli Lilly has launched an obesity awareness campaign in the Copenhagen metro and in other large Danish cities, and Danish patient groups and branding experts say it amounts to disguised marketing for weight-loss medicine.
The campaign appears on posters, on social media and on outdoor advertising space, DR reports. The sender is not Novo Nordisk, but its American rival Eli Lilly, which is now competing for attention on Danish ground.
One poster in the metro carries the title “Every life with obesity has its own story” and shows a woman looking into the horizon. The message is that people living with severe obesity are not alone, and that a doctor can help.
Kristina May, a branding and communication expert and director at the agency AM Copenhagen, told DR’s program P1 Morgen that the usual line identifying a pharmaceutical sender is missing. She also noted that the poster carries only the word Lilly in script, not the company’s full name, which she described as very friendly communication.
All roads lead to the doctor
The poster directs readers to a website called MinSværeOvervægt.dk. According to DR, the site is owned by Eli Lilly but uses a different visual identity, which can make it hard for a consumer to see where they have landed. The site includes a BMI calculator and a referral to an online weight-loss program at a clinic called Yazen.
May said the entire site is built to send visitors to a doctor, and that the underlying purpose is to sell weight-loss medicine. She said she has nothing against such medicine, but objects when the pharmaceutical industry, with heavy commercial interests, produces health education.
Danish law bars pharmaceutical companies from advertising prescription medicines in Denmark, DR notes. Eli Lilly told P1 Morgen in writing that the campaign is an information campaign about severe obesity as a chronic disease, and that it is not tied to any specific medicine. The company said it wants to support people who need help to speak with a health professional, and declined an interview.
Danske Patienter, an umbrella organization that says it represents 900,000 patients and relatives in Denmark, is also strongly critical. Director Morten Freil told P1 Morgen that the campaign is deeply problematic, that it makes obesity look like illness, and that the sender and the interests behind it are hard to identify.
Freil stressed that nothing on the poster or website is factually wrong. He said the organization sees advertising packaged as information, and that this misleads citizens. Danske Patienter is calling on the health minister to tighten the law so such campaigns from the pharmaceutical industry are banned.
The scrutiny follows a wider legal dispute between the two companies. The Local Denmark reported that Novo Nordisk has sued Eli Lilly over allegedly misleading weight-loss advertising, and CNBC dated that lawsuit to July 21, 2026.
