This film was part of an ongoing series of content we produce to publicize IBM’s groundbreaking research. Our overall target audience is what we define as “Forward Thinkers”, the roughly 7% of the population most interested in keeping abreast of the worlds of science and technology.

Beyond this relatively broad consumer target we built out specific influencer engagement strategies to take our content to specialist healthcare audiences and launched in tandem with IBM Research’s publication of a paper on its nanomedicine breakthrough in Nature Communications.

As our film was publicizing an IBM Research project not a commercialized product, and was released within IBM’s owned media channels (Youtube), we were not subject to specific Healthcare/RX/Pharma advertising restrictions.

Our animated film dramatizes the threat posed by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a strain of antibiotic resistant bacteria that kills more than 19,000 people per year in the US. We open in a doctor’s office, where a boy is being examined for a small red bump on the skin. We zoom in to find our “superbug supervillain” MRSA wreaking havoc on his body’s cells. We see a failed assault on the bacterium by methicillin and penicillin (the antibiotic drugs it’s evolved beyond).

When all seems lost, enter IBM’s new invention: “ninja polymers” – nanoparticles that are drawn to MRSA’s electrostatic charge, killing the bacteria before it can cause any more damage.

We close by announcing that IBM is working with drug companies to commercialize the technology.