Striking with design precision at ESMO 2025
Designed to cut through at one of the world’s busiest oncology congresses, this striking ESMO 2025 stand delivered exceptional engagement and impact.
Find out how Emota and Merck partnered to turn clarity and creativity into results.
The Challenge
At many medical congresses, product often trumps company brand, with exhibition stands stuffed with competing product messages to confusing effect. At ESMO 2025, Merck wanted our help to avoid this common pitfall.
ESMO is one of the largest oncology congresses in the world, attracting up to 40,000 healthcare professionals, researchers, industry leaders, patient advocates and media. More than 200 exhibitors compete for attention, including the largest global oncology players.
Merck and Emota shared a clear ambition: move beyond the traditional marketplace approach and present a unified, future facing oncology story.
Merck’s strong commercial offering and stellar pipeline was worth shouting about. But just how could it compete against stands with a larger footprint? Entice attendees over and above other stands? Cut through the noise of a packed congress? And, compel visitors to give up their precious time to know more about Merck?
The Solution
From product led to purpose led
Merck had historically adopted a marketplace model, with individual product zones and stand-alone messaging. With a growing portfolio and ambitious pipeline, both teams recognised the need for a more cohesive approach.
In close partnership with commercial and medical stakeholders, we reimagined the stand as a unified experience anchored under one overarching idea. Rather than leading with multiple brand narratives, the space would communicate a single, powerful message about Merck’s approach to cancer.
At ESMO, delegates move rapidly between sessions, posters and symposia under significant cognitive load. Success is driven not by volume of information, but by clarity, relevance and credibility.
An agnostic stand, built around one strong organising concept, would allow visitors to immediately understand why Merck matters, the scientific problems it is addressing and how its clinical focus aligns with their own interests.
A single guiding concept
Merck Oncology had adopted the tagline “Striking cancer at its core,” but it had never been translated into an exhibition environment.
Together, we brought this platform to life physically, digitally and strategically. It became the guiding principle shaping architecture, tone of voice, content hierarchy and experience design.
It would help us do two things in parallel. As a creative concept, it would inform a visual language to guide the physical design of the stand, the look and feel of our screen content and ensure the successful integration of both. And, it would guide the development and organisation of new and existing content, both thematically and strategically.
A striking visual and architectural language
In collaboration with Merck’s brand team, we developed the visual device of “strikes” as the core architectural and graphic building block.
Strikes appeared underfoot, overhead and onscreen, directing attention toward a central hospitality area representing the “core.” The design language unified every element of the stand, from structural features to animation and printed graphics.
Colour played a critical role. Re exploring Merck’s palette together, we elevated an underused shocking pink to define the commercial zone and introduced an electric teal to distinguish medical content. The result was bold, confident and unmistakably Merck.
Each side of the stand featured a giant curved LED wall with a central aperture. Animated strikes periodically targeted this break in the screen, visually reinforcing the idea of striking the core. Circular animated bridges swept across both screens to unify the space and create immersive takeover moments.
On the primary commercial corner, a colouring wall shaped from strike motifs created an inviting, human focal point that further signposted the central experience.
Immersive content, engineered at scale
The physical architecture and digital content were designed as one integrated system.
Over several months, Emota and Merck’s brand, commercial and medical teams worked in close collaboration to build two distinct yet synchronised four-minute screen loops. This required careful coordination across multiple stakeholders, parallel production streams and meticulous adaptation of existing assets.
The stand takeover moments, where screens, embedded lighting and audio aligned in synchrony, opened each loop with a powerful declaration: We are Merck… We are… Striking cancer at its core.
An abridged, enhanced oncology film followed, developed in partnership with Merck’s global marketing team. Existing footage was refined and extended using AI assisted production techniques to clarify and elevate the therapy area narrative.
The commercial loop was shaped alongside brand teams to repackage and scale product content for the immersive screen format while maintaining the overarching story. The medical loop was developed in close collaboration with scientific stakeholders, rebuilding molecular assets and visualising the future pipeline through bespoke animation.
Furniture design echoed the architectural language, with curved forms positioned to encourage conversation and flow. Modular seating and tables interlocked seamlessly across the stand, supporting both flexibility and sustainability. Reusable LED structures and modular components marked a meaningful step forward in Merck’s long term sustainability ambitions.
As Alena Lobodina, Global Marketing Lead, Merck, reflected:
I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for the incredible work that went into making ESMO the best event we have ever had at Merck Oncology, as per leadership feedback. Your dedication, creativity and teamwork truly shone through every aspect of the event, and I am so proud of what we accomplished together.
The Impact
Together, we did not simply build a stand. We built a statement of intent. The experience did not just communicate the message “Striking cancer at its core.” It embodied it through architecture, colour, motion and immersive storytelling.
The stand delivered exceptional engagement throughout the congress, with a marked increase in engaged visitors compared to 2024 and a significant uplift in conversion of passers by into meaningful interactions. Delegates spent sustained time within the space, enabling deeper immersion in key messages and stronger recall.
The stand generated consistent energy on the show floor and attracted enthusiastic, unsolicited praise from attendees and stakeholders alike.
The results exceeded expectations:
- 8,800 unique stand visitors
- 95% conversion of walkway passersby to stand visitors
- 250% increase in badge scans versus ESMO 2024
ESMO 2025 has established a new blueprint for how Emota and Merck will continue to evolve the congress experience together — purpose led, partnership driven and built to scale with Merck’s growing oncology ambition.