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Blog
Obesity Deep Dive: The Unparalleled Launch Success of Mounjaro and Zepbound
Sep 23, 2025
This blog is part of an ongoing series, A Brave New World: Therapeutic Area Deep Dives.
The life sciences industry has never seen anything like the Anti-Obesity Market (AOM). Rocket-like launches created unprecedented demand, stressed supply chains, and caused payers world-wide to question their ability to pay for obesity treatment. At the same time, celebrities popularized treatment and brought the benefits of weight loss management into mainstream front-page news. The popularity and ubiquity of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and GLP-1/gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist drugs (herein both referred to as GLP-1 drugs) continue to make headlines as they become one of the highest grossing drug classes of all time. You do not have to be an industry expert to have heard about the rise of these new drugs.
The GLP-1 market is led by semaglutide products Ozempic and Wegovy (Novo Nordisk) and tirzepatide products Mounjaro and Zepbound (Lilly). Though GLP-1s existed in the diabetes market as early as 2010, it was the weight loss efficacy and widespread adoption of Ozempic that thrust the drug class into the spotlight. With Mounjaro’s launch in 2022, and the subsequent launch of Zepbound in 2023, the anti-obesity market catapulted into mega-blockbuster status with multiple billion dollar plus brands. Concurrent with this unprecedented boom was the rise of patient empowerment and self-advocacy, forever transforming the power of the consumer within the pharmaceutical industry.
However, as the broad pharmaceutical launch environment continues to become increasingly restrictive, highlighting the key drivers behind the success of Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound launches can provide critical insights for future strategies. Whether you compete in the diabetes or AOM market or not, there are critical launch lessons that can be learned.
Launches far and above the rest
Achieving a successful product launch has become an elusive feat. Over the last six years, only 7% of new products have managed to achieve $100 million in cumulative gross sales within the first year, a stark contrast to earlier periods. Among the top “blockbuster” launches are the GLP-1 brands launched since 2018, as well as transformative first-in-class treatments like Harvoni (Hepatitis C) and Ocrevus (multiple sclerosis). In contrast to all other successful launches, Mounjaro and Zepbound had astronomical growth and a trajectory that has continued for years post-launch. Nearly three years since its launch, Mounjaro is selling around $3 billion a month, while Zepbound is on track to surpass that amount in a few months’ time. With the exception of Harvoni, Mounjaro and Zepbound are the only launch products ever to surpass $5 billion in sales in their first 12 months – and their sales have only continued to grow.
Patients lead the way
The most important driver in the boom of Mounjaro and GLP-1s has undeniably been patient demand. Between August 2021 and July 2024, social media mentions regarding obesity treatment brands surpassed 1.4 million, reflecting a 740% increase compared to the preceding three-year period. Over the same period, there were 53 million searches for obesity as a disease, indicating a patient-driven shift in public discourse. Patients are increasingly prioritizing treatment solutions over disease awareness and playing an active role in shaping demand for GLP-1 therapies. A pivotal moment occurred in October 2022, just four months after Mounjaro’s launch, when Elon Musk admitted on Twitter (X) that taking Wegovy was his secret for looking “fit and healthy.” The post, and a subsequent tweet in 2024 that he was taking Mounjaro, went viral and sparked widespread curiosity around GLP-1s and their effectiveness on weight loss. Prior to Musk’s tweet, GLP-1s had collectively reached 2.5 million prescriptions per month, but the boost in attention led to GLP-1 volume more than doubling a year later. By the end of 2024, GLP-1 volume had surpassed 9M prescriptions.
This patient-led momentum was reinforced by an increase in GLP-1 promotional spend. Driven by the launch of Mounjaro, increased direct-to-consumer and provider promotion efforts furthered public awareness and treatment discussions. As the number of GLP-1 options grew, Novo Nordisk and Lilly invested heavily in promotional campaigns. This raised brand awareness of their own respective products and contributed to a shared battlefield against unapproved or compounded products.
In the month before Mounjaro’s launch, $1.8 billion had been spent on GLP-1 promotion; by mid-2025, spend had reached over $7 billion across the GLP-1 class. More advertisements and more information were reaching more patients than ever before.
Tapping an untapped market
The successes of Mounjaro and Zepbound can also be attributed to their harnessing a previously unmet need for a large segment of the U.S. population. Though semaglutide had been known to promote weight loss, the results of tirzepatide in reducing body weight reinvigorated the conversation around GLP-1s and weight loss. With its higher comparative efficacy, Mounjaro launched at just the right time: public awareness of GLP-1s was increasing and demand skyrocketed.
Prior to 2022, only 1.8% (1.6M) of patients diagnosed with obesity had initiated anti-obesity treatment. Following the launch of Mounjaro in 2022, the number of patients on GLP-1 therapy exploded, with a 200% increase in unique patients in 12 months. As of the second quarter of 2025, 11 million unique patients were using a GLP-1 across indications, having consistently grown year-over-year. Despite this massive growth in patient base, it represents only a small segment of the population diagnosed with obesity, leaving a lot of room to grow in this class.
More providers, more prescriptions
With skyrocketing patient demand, providers adopted Mounjaro and Zepbound at a faster rate than any other successful historical launch. At 12 months post-launch, Mounjaro and Zepbound had amassed four times as many unique providers as the earlier launches of Ozempic and Wegovy. GLP-1s appealed to many provider specialties, as there was growing evidence of GLP-1 efficacy across comorbid areas.
As providers grew, patient volume grew even more quickly, with the average number of patients per provider increasing month-over-month. This productivity translated to an exponential growth in prescriptions as providers began prescribing tirzepatide. Just three years post-launch, Mounjaro reached an average of 9 patients per provider, while Zepbound was prescribed to 7 patients per provider just 18 months post-launch. As more providers became increasingly comfortable prescribing these products, the number of patients they reached grew alongside them. For launch products, it is becoming increasingly important to look at not just physician activation but also productivity and how deeply they are prescribing into the available patient population.
Key learnings from unparalleled success
The rise of GLP-1 drugs, specifically Mounjaro and Zepbound, has transformed the treatment of diabetes and obesity, setting a new benchmark for the level of success a launch can achieve. Strong clinical efficacy, strategic launch initiatives, consumer activation, and promotional investment formed the foundations of campaigns that successfully aligned with key market drivers resulting in the most successful drug launches ever seen. The key learnings are crucial, and when taken together, may be the recipe for success that every manufacturer needs:
- Patients are playing a greater role in their care. In today’s digital age, where internet access and social media are widespread, patients are empowered to take a more proactive role in managing their healthcare. With a wealth of online resources at their fingertips, individuals can now research treatment options before consulting with a healthcare provider. Furthermore, manufacturers are starting to implement more “consumer like” healthcare experiences for patients mirroring the convenience and personalization found in other industries. By using integrated technology platforms and tapping into the increased use of wearable technology, patients can participate more actively in their healthcare. With this rise in consumerism, there is no going back, and manufacturers must incorporate direct-to-patient strategies and communication into their launch plans.
- Populations with unmet needs provide ample opportunity for uptake and growth. Targeting populations with unmet medical needs presents a significant opportunity for successful drug launches. These groups often lack effective treatment options, meaning that a new therapy that fulfils an unmet need could quickly gain traction and help address a critical gap in care. By addressing conditions or populations that are underserved, pharmaceutical companies can improve patient outcomes and drive strong market uptake for long-term growth. This is true for large retail drug launches like those observed in obesity and migraine, in specialty markets with high need patient populations, and in rare and orphan diseases that lack treatment options.
- Providers are a cornerstone of uptake. Healthcare providers play a pivotal role in the success of any drug launch, serving as a cornerstone of product uptake. As trusted decision-makers in patient care, providers are the primary gatekeepers for access to new therapies. Their awareness, understanding, and confidence in a new drug can influence how quickly and widely it is adopted in clinical practice. Patients acting as consumers, as observed in the AOM launches, increasingly influence prescriber choices. Non-personal promotion such as digital engagement combined with consumer approaches are powerful combinations that drive physician behavior.
The Bottom Line
The level of difficulty in the modern launch environment is unforgiving. Drugs, like the GLP-1s, that are finding success must be studied. Knowing exactly where and how to tap into the right key drivers highlights a path to launch success in modern markets.
- Directly engaging patients by providing them with resources and information, empowers them to make decisions on their healthcare before they even consult their providers.
- Focusing on the unmet need that a launch brand addresses can allow for increased provider interest, faster adoption, and greater support from the broader healthcare community.
- Effectively engaging providers, through medical education, peer-to-peer outreach, and strong clinical evidence, is essential to building the trust needed for sustained and widespread prescribing behavior.
- Clinical and real-world evidence delivered in a consumer-friendly manner expands the audience and use of research. Focusing on patient needs, integrating research to drive broader audiences, and finding new models to demonstrate the value of treatment are just a few of the lessons from the GLP-1s.
- The right mix of personal, non-personal, and consumer driven promotion speeds adoption from multiple directions.
For manufacturers that recognize these key factors and have a plan from launch to successfully address them, a path to commercial success can be attainable. Reach out to IQVIA to learn more about how to build successful launch strategies like those executed among the GLP-1s in recent years.
A Brave New World: Therapeutic Area Deep Dives on Obesity
This blog is the first of a new series exploring a range of topics in the obesity market, including: market size and scope, impact of payer controls, activity in non-traditional channels, patient behavior, GLP-1 impact, HCP responses, the policy landscape, pharmacy economics, and the outlook for the future of GLP-1. You can find all of our Brave New World content in the U.S. Insights Library.