Merck bumps Keytruda credibility with real doctor appearance in latest ‘Tru’ patient ads
Questex LLC. | January 16, 2019
Merck & Co. is changing the game again in oncology ads, this time putting a real doctor to work in its Keytruda patient campaign. The latest additions to the multichannel "It's Tru" work include two TV ads, one with oncologist Goetz Kloecker, M.D., alone and a second where he appears with his lung cancer patient Katy. In the solo ad, Kloecker’s voiceover is heard as he walks the halls of a hospital, meets with colleagues and patients, works behind a computer and teaches in a large classroom.
“It’s an encouraging time to be treating advanced lung cancer. Treatments like Keytruda with chemotherapy really break through barriers that we had not too many years ago,” he says.
In the second TV commercial with Katy, Kloecker appears as more of a bit player, sitting with Katy to talk about her treatment and saying, as he also does in the first ad, that Keytruda has “changed my approach to treating patients.” Katy talks about her experience after being diagnosed with advanced non-small cell lung cancer last year. She is the fourth patient and third appearing as themselves in Merck’s “It’s Tru” campaign, which began in January 2017.