Case study

Thermo Fisher Scientific -

The Art Of Cells

Our award-winning, attention-grabbing video campaign took a creative look at the work of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Gibco brand to drive awareness of its mission to support cell culture excellence.

AWARDS

Situation

For over half a century, Gibco has provided scientific excellence to the research community with the most respected cell culture products in the industry.

Recent advances in cell biology have brought this essential branch of science into greater focus and scrutiny in the media and captured the popular imagination with breakthroughs such as cloning and gene editing.

Gibco wanted to capitalize on this new momentum in cell biology to show its unique contribution to cell culture science in a fresh new way that would cut through the noise to gain media attention and extend its audience reach via video, social media and an expanded digital presence. The challenge was to translate the technically complex work of scientists into a creative, engaging artwork that would resonate with an audience of scientists and non-scientists alike.

In the previous year, we had run a similar video campaign, “Love Your Cells”, where leading scientists wrote “love letters” to their cells. The campaign achieved significant success in the market, in society, and in the marketing community. In an age of media saturation and strong competition for audience attention, that campaign fostered a strong emotional response in our audience of highly-informed scientists and researchers, and communicating Gibco’s role and values effectively. We had an opportunity now to do a sequel.

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Solution

We chose to continue to leverage scientists’ passion for cell cultures by showing the human, emotional face of cell culture research. Building on the impact of Love Your Cells, we launched the Art of Cells campaign, building on the insight that cell biology is not just a science, it’s also an art. We doubled down and paired up leading cell scientists with select artists who had benefitted directly from the scientist’s work and showcased that connection through the artist’s work.

We had artists create a wide range of media, from 3D animation to AR installations and data-driven sound design and juxtaposed the artist’s work with an interview of the scientist when exposed to the resulting artworks. The scientists’ reactions resulted in a visually engaging and emotionally touching “Artist Reveal” video series that showed the extraordinary connection between scientists and their cells and an example of the impact on society, presented through extraordinary art.

Outcomes

This unique fusion of art and cell science created an impact in the industry and in the scientific community and was championed by key leaders within Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The Gibco Art of Cells campaign drove over 21.3 million impressions across programmatic banners and beyond, generated 27k+ clicks, and supercharged landing page traffic.

The Art of Cells “Artist Reveal” videos received over 1 million YouTube views, and brought Gibco’s mission to an international audience in a way that truly captured the imagination.

The plethora of awards that the campaign won and the newly engaged audiences contributed to a 60% year on year growth in new contracts.