People suffering from NTM lung disease aren’t being diagnosed. Their complaints about painful and disruptive symptoms are getting attributed to underlying conditions, leaving them misdiagnosed for years. This campaign targets pulmonologists and infectious disease specialists—the HCPs who diagnose, treat, and manage patients with nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung disease.

We wanted to find a way to make doctors not just understand but feel what patients were going through. Our aim was to create an imperative for pulmonologists to identify any patient they think might have NTM—to help relieve their suffering and finally give them hope of relief.

To finally get doctors to raise their index of suspicion for this rare disease, we paired real NTM patients with animators from around the world to create original films that communicate how hard it is for NTM patients to live without a diagnosis.

“Unbreakable” tells the real-life story of Barbara, characterized as a CGI bunny. Barbara’s tale illustrates how she went from therapy to therapy, misdiagnosis to misdiagnosis, and doctor to doctor, with no one having the right expertise to help. The film chronicles Barbara’s worsening condition and loss of hope, until she finally finds the answer she needs.

This story is told through rich and poetic visuals with a fantastical layer to pave the way for tackling the deeper concerns at play. Due to the bunny’s size and POV, everything needed to be in close-up view and fully textured—from the conveyor belt to the shopkeepers’ workstations.

With physicians misunderstanding their patients’ complaints for years, we knew that a patient simply telling her story wasn’t going to make an impact. Instead, we employed the art of storytelling to deliver a breakthrough campaign that got doctors’ attention. The animations demand that doctors identify, diagnose, and treat NTM before their patients pay the price.

We were able to deliver our message to key physician segments—pulmonologists and infectious disease specialists—and persuaded them to recognize the symptoms of undiagnosed NTM lung disease so they could start testing and treating their at-risk patients for this odious disease.

“Unbreakable” launched on the unbranded NTMFacts.com website in December 2020. The film took 3.5-4 months from initiation to completion.

“Unbreakable” was selected as Vimeo’s Staff Pick during its first week of posting and has garnered more than 55K views in just 2 months.