Make it stop. Ozempic's maker has taken the warehouse of cash it has made to reunite the "I'm a Mac" actors for another excruciating ripoff, but has no more clue how to do it than Microsoft or Qualcomm did.
Let's recap a bit. The original Apple ads from 2006 to 2009 were clever, effective, and funny, but "Get a Mac" is still being copied by companies that want to show they are none of these things.
The latest is from Novo Nordisk. It's the Danish mega-pharmaceutical company that makes Ozempic, and about three-quarters of the rest of the medicine that you take.
To their kind of credit, though, Novo Nordisk has definitely done the absolute worst version of this campaign. The video is not yet available on social media, but can be seen on the firm's press release, if you can make it all the way through.
You won't. It starts with a hilarious 45-second long game show that pits Ozempic (Justin Long) against "Other GLP-1s for Type 2 Diabetes" (John Hodgman).
In the game show, a host asks a single question about drug approvals, and Hodgman's character is delighted to get in first with the answer. Until he realizes that of course the answer is Ozempic and he's just promoted his rival.
The key to making something funny is always to make it longer, apparently. Painfully, the video continues for another 2 minutes 36 seconds of Justin Long reading out the small print. Really.
John Hodgman's character wins a lot of marbles. Your guess is as good as ours. Image credit: Novo Nordisk
As spotted by Fast Company, it appears that this is the start of a whole campaign called "There's Only One Ozempic." It's using Long and Hodgman because Novo Nordisk believes they and this mock rivalry are well-known, two decades after their Apple work.
"Humor has a way of opening the door to conversations people might otherwise avoid," Justin Long said in a statement for the company. "This campaign uses that idea thoughtfully and meets people where they are consuming content while helping them feel comfortable enough to learn more about their health."
Similarly shilling for the firm, John Hodgman recited some company-approved lines about medication options.
"What I appreciate about this campaign is the way it encourages meaningful conversations that can truly make a difference," he added.
We keep coming back to this
For starters, good on the two actors for making money off of the corpse of 20-year-old ad campaign. That is a rare feat.
It is true that companies seem to think audiences loved "I'm a Mac," that they'll want to buy products that remind them of it. But it isn't entirely fair to say that absolutely every ad that leans on Apple's work is poor.
For instance, in 2017, Huawei hired Justin Long for its advertising campaign, and it worked. We may never know if it shifted a lot of Huawei phones, but as an ad, it conveyed points, and it was funny.
Justin Long in an ad for Huawei — image credit: Huawei
Crucially, though, if it leaned on how we might remember the Apple ads, we didn't have to. If you'd never seen those originals, this still worked as a good ad with Long auditioning to direct technology commercials.
He's a little geeky in it, which slightly plays against his more cool image in the Apple ads. But then he keeps getting hired because of that cool role.
In June 2024, he brought the cool to an ad for Qualcomm that was close to incomprehensible.
This ad absolutely requires you to remember the "I'm a Mac" ads. Long's entire dialogue is a piece to camera after he searches for a PC, saying "What? Things change."
You can make an argument that he's sitting at a MacBook and has just Googled "where can I find a Snapdragon powered PC?" like any normal human being would. So we've seen a Mac, we're seeing him looking at PCs, you can say that's sufficient.
But just in case you buy that logic, Qualcomm wants to be sure you left are bewildered. The ad ends with Justin Long pointing at his coffee mug like it's proof of change.
It's not as bad as 2 minutes and 36 seconds of Long reciting T&Cs, but it still feels written by committee.
Don't you dare be funny
Which must be the case with every one of Microsoft's attempts to either directly copy "I'm a Mac," or just try to be funny. Perhaps the first example was in 2008, when Microsoft wanted to out-funny the then-current Apple ads.
Microsoft threw some money at the idea, and teamed up the legendary comedy duo of Jerry Seinfeld — and Bill Gates.
It's not without its moments, but at 4 minutes and 30 seconds, they are very few and very far between. While Microsoft denied there had been plans for a series of ads, the series was cancelled.
But never say never, and later that same year, Microsoft's ad agency took a long hard look at what made "I'm a Mac" work. Consequently, it launched the "I'm a PC" campaign.
Apple and its ad firm Chiat/Day (now TBWA\Media Arts Lab) must have been ecstatic. Because Microsoft's ads were defensive, not to say a little whiny, and they began with an impersonation of John Hodgman.
So the then incredibly more successful Microsoft was spending millions to draw attention to Apple. It was a gift.
And it was the gift that kept on giving, too. If the general TV-viewing public were being reminded of the Apple ads, people more specifically into technology finally got a laugh.
For later in 2008, metadata in the campaign's online graphics revealed that "I'm a PC" was made on Macs. It was even made using Adobe software, when Microsoft was selling its own Expressions Studio.
To be fair to Novo Nordisk, there is no indication that they used Apple gear to make their new ad. Unless it's buried in the 2 minutes and 36 seconds of disclaimers, next to the warnings about not sharing Ozempic with others.
