Merz Aesthetics - Blending art, innovation and science

Merz Aesthetics pioneer solutions to help people look better, feel better and live better. Their challenge was to reconnect with their community of prestigious experts through a premium virtual experience – this couldn’t “just be a webcast”. In response, we created a beautiful hybrid experience that blended art, innovation and science.

The client
Merz Aesthetics pioneer solutions to help people look better, feel better and live better. For example, in their own words “consider a patient with upper limb spasticity due to a stroke, or with cervical dystonia which twists their head around, leaving them in near-constant pain. Treatment with Botulinum Neurotoxin relaxes muscles and allows activities of daily living much more easily and, in the eyes of an observer the patient certainly looks more normal”.

As a privately-held and family-owned company with a 100 year-plus history, Merz believe in taking a long-term view. Their vision is to become the most Admired, Trusted and Innovative Aesthetics and Neurotoxins Company in the World.

The complexity challenge
The Merz Aesthetics Expert Summit is traditionally an exclusive live experience. For the first time, Merz needed to recreate this experience virtually for a demanding audience of industry experts. The complexity challenge lay in understanding detailed product information and advanced techniques and communicating them in a premium way that kept experts hooked and motivated to interact virtually.

The intelligence
An in-house team of scientific writers, content strategists, digital strategists and experience designers came together with the Merz team and an external key opinion leader (KOL) to really get under the hood of the information and key messaging that needed to be communicated.

The KOL was able to inspire us with insights from her previous experience as a regular speaker and attendee of the summit. She helped us to understand our audience of aestheticians as people who view their profession as part treatment, part craft. From this grain of truth, we envisioned an event identity that combines artistic flair with scientific rigor. We developed the theme ‘Let Innovation Bloom’, which the client loved for its expression of the sentiment and purpose of the meeting – this was also well-received by attendees in their feedback.

The solution
A premium hybrid event focused on aesthetics needed to look beautiful, feel beautiful and sound beautiful. Our creative concept, Let innovation bloom, provided a platform to achieve just that. We created a stunning visual identity with a rich, high-end floral design that flowed from the live studio environment to the virtual platform and every touchpoint in between.

The visuals were complimented with sound through a collaboration with renowned composer Dom Jones. The original score was crafted as an example of precision and emotion, which ‘Let Innovation Bloom’ is all about. The composition was then performed live by a celloist as the opening moment of the event. From collaborating with the composer and performer, we were able to produce a moment that immediately made our audience’s ears prick up. The idea was to inspire aestheticians with a display of technical skill and expressive talent – which are also cornerstones of their own profession.

With a striking live studio in place, we needed our virtual destination to match. Merz chose to use our in-house virtual event platform, heddle. This enabled Merz to create a fully customised end-to-end virtual experience that equalled the live experience and was personalised to every expert.

A dedicated team of event producers, content designers, attendee experience designers, technicians and health, safety and risk experts worked with the Merz team to deliver a seamless virtual attendee experience that involved networking, panel sessions, on-demand content, surveys and an awards ceremony.

721 live viewers across 2 days of content
898 on demand streams
Attendees from 62 countries
Content translated into 9 languages
Delegates rated the experience 5.2/6

Audience feedback

“Very informative, interactive & interesting”

“I had a wonderful experience overall and learned many things I incorporated into my practice.”

“Fantastic”