What if a global pharmaceutical company could ensure the patient voice is always in the room—at every decision point, across every market? Merck set out to answer that through the Red Chair campaign: an empty red chair placed prominently in meeting rooms, offices, and other workspaces as a symbolic stand-in for the patient perspective and reminder of the constant need for urgency and inclusion when making lifesaving products.
The idea began in 2022, when a Merck leader was moved after a colleague’s loved one died waiting for COVID-19 treatment in their country. That inspired teams in Australia and New Zealand to place a red chair in meetings as a prompt to keep patients central in every decision. The message was simple: “What if the patient was sitting right here with us?” It created an immediate emotional connection, reinforced urgent action, and became a unifying symbol of Merck’s mission. Its simplicity made it universal; its symbolism, deeply human.
Recognizing that the Red Chair could become far more than a regional gesture, Merck set out to transform it into a global movement. Because every day counts for patients waiting for lifesaving medicines, the objective was to reinforce this mindset across the organization. To succeed, employees across functions and markets needed to consistently consider, understand, and apply the campaign’s core message: patients can’t wait. Through digital storytelling, social amplification, and employee participation, the Red Chair organically evolved from a meeting-room symbol into a globally recognized expression of urgency, accountability, and patient-first mindset.
Merck faced a communications challenge: How do you scale a deeply human idea across a global organization without losing its emotional meaning? The strategy centered on transforming the Red Chair from a simple physical object into a scalable storytelling platform.
At the center of the campaign was a cinematic hero video, “Patients Can’t Wait – The Red Chair,” which told the story behind the initiative and introduced the chair as a symbolic stand-in for the patient voice. The spot follows a carpenter carefully crafting a red chair from wood and fabric before revealing the chair placed throughout Merck offices and public spaces. From meeting rooms and hallways to the middle of an entry roadway, the conspicuous placement ensures the patient perspective is top of mind at every step. The video showed the Red Chair in a way that employees could immediately understand, adopt, and share. It gave the campaign a broadly human narrative to build on, and a striking visual identity that resonated across both internal and external audiences.
Merck extended the storytelling through Merck.com content, internal communications, executive messaging, employee videos and social media content. Digital assets gave employees and leaders a common narrative framework while allowing regions to localize the message in ways that felt authentic to their audiences. Red Chair visuals were incorporated into virtual meeting templates, intranet sites, digital backdrops, and office displays. The consistent visual language of the Red Chair, combined with a narrative format that allowed for repeatable but customizable storytelling, helped the campaign scale rapidly while maintaining a unified message.
Digital and social channels were critical to scaling participation and visibility. Organic and paid social content across LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and internal platforms amplified employee stories and patient experiences, leadership perspectives, campaign videos, and patient-first messaging. Employees became active distributors of the campaign, sharing personal reflections on the symbol and localized content that reinforced authenticity and helped drive peer-to-peer adoption across the organization.
One big challenge in conceiving the campaign was ensuring that the intention for more patient-centricity could transcend an abstract corporate message. The Red Chair addressed this by giving employees a simple but emotionally resonant reminder that could become part of everyday moments and decisions. Digital storytelling then enabled the idea to scale globally, transforming the Red Chair from a meeting-room prompt into a lasting behavioral cue embedded across Merck’s culture and communications ecosystem.
As the campaign spread, employees began using the Red Chair as a practical decision-making cue in their everyday work. As Prashant Nikam, a managing director who helped originate the idea, explained: “When we see that red chair in our workspace, when we envision that patient being in the room listening to us, we make decisions that are truly focused on doing what’s best for them.”
Across corporate social channels, Red Chair content generated more than 193,000 organic impressions, outperforming reach and engagement benchmarks. Paid social further expanded visibility, delivering 470k+ impressions, also beating engagement benchmarks. Employees consistently say the film and social content helped them understand and embrace the campaign.
Today, the campaign is active in 40+ countries, with teams adapting the Red Chair in ways that reflect their own cultures and functions. Red chairs now appear in meeting rooms, laboratories, town halls, sales meetings, and virtual workspaces, as well as externally in medical congresses and Parliament hearings.
The campaign has encouraged employees to approach their work through a more human lens. It has led development teams to rethink how low-grade adverse events affect patients’ willingness to continue treatment, encouraged researchers to publish patient experience data alongside clinical statistics, and prompted clinical trial teams to revise recruitment materials. The empty chair has also spurred more inclusion of real patient voices at events like Merck’s Global Patient Day.
The Red Chair’s influence now extends beyond Merck. Patient organizations and vendor partners have adopted the symbol within their own work. In Australia, a Red Chair-inspired “patient voice” initiative helped incorporate patient insights in reimbursement submissions to the government, influencing policy decisions.
What began as an empty chair honoring a colleague’s loss now represents the millions of patients waiting for hope and treatment. Amplified through storytelling and embraced across the organization, the Red Chair serves as a daily reminder of why Merck works with urgency: patients can’t wait.
