Merz Aesthetics has revamped its sales and marketing leadership, promoting an employee and hiring a vice president from GSK to fill key positions.
DJ Sethares has joined Merz, which sells the Botox rival Xeomin, as vice president of U.S. marketing. During an 11-year spell at GSK and its HIV business ViiV Healthcare, Sethares rose to the role of vice president of vaccine marketing at the Big Pharma. The role put Sethares in charge of U.S. commercial strategy and branding across a variety of therapeutic areas.
Merz looked closer to home for its new head of North American sales by promoting Chris Van Dyk to the post. Van Dyk joined Merz in 2022 and worked as country manager for Merz Aesthetics Canada before landing the new role. Earlier in his career, Van Dyk worked at companies including Johnson & Johnson, Bayer and Alcon.
Going into 2025, Roberto Casas was vice president of marketing at Merz, and the company split its North American sales team in two, with Marcus Oldelehr handling the western region and Patricia Jones in charge of the eastern half. The three executives are no longer listed among Merz’s leadership, and, according to their LinkedIn profiles, all left the company earlier this year.
Merz has put marketing at the center of its attempts to claim a piece of an anti-wrinkle market that is synonymous with its chief rival, AbbVie’s Botox. The company has signed up celebrities including Joe Jonas, Christina Aguilera and Demi Lovato as spokespeople to try to carve out a niche for Xeomin in the Generation Z and millennial populations.
The company maintained the celeb-led approach when rolling out the latest version of its noninvasive skin-lifting device earlier this year, naming Salma Hayek Pinault the first global brand ambassador for the technology.