Ozempic, Oatly, MedMen Are Branding Through ‘Moral Static’

When Ozempic was first changing into a family identify final yr, the general public discourse round semaglutide took on a predictable sample. First there was concern about its security, then skepticism of its effectiveness, and at last the query of its morality. Was it immoral for overweight folks to “cheat” utilizing semaglutide to shed further weight?

When each different sensible concern was rebuffed, and even after offshoot manufacturers like Zepbound had been developed and launched particularly for weight reduction administration as a substitute of diabetes, the morality argument solely grew louder. This isn’t an unusual sample for manufacturers like Ozempic and their counterparts. We’ve seen it play out within the public discourse round OpenAI, OnlyFans, Oatly, and smaller manufacturers in rising classes like feminine hormone substitute remedy, polyamory, end-of-life care, and baby formula. 

It’s one of the crucial attention-grabbing model frontiers I see firms tackling—what I name “ethical static.” We see ethical static in classes the place new applied sciences, innovations, or concepts are forcing us to face our deeply held, generally deeply false, biases. When these biases are laid naked, we resort to an argument of morality. 

Ethical static isn’t real or nuanced discourse. It’s the chaotic buzz of blunt ethical objection with no actual path or dialogue towards progress. When improvements threaten peoples’ identities, they cling to one-size-fits-all arguments, and as a substitute of manufacturing a transparent dialog about how we will replace our fashions of what’s proper and mistaken, these classes produce static.

Food manufacturers, which function in a extremely identity-driven class, see their fair proportion of ethical static. Oatly confronted preliminary pushback in its native Sweden, with critics discounting their oat milk as nutritionally inferior to cow’s milk and asserting the corporate’s sustainability guarantees had been inflated. Oatly simply dismissed or disproved these claims, however it wasn’t till dairy farmers and customers pointed at Oatly’s slogan, “Flush the milk,” as attacking a Swedish lifestyle for each dairy farmers and customers that Oatly’s narrative was lastly complicated with ethical static.