Most digital billboards use only half of their computer’s processing power. Dentsu Creative and nib (Australian private health insurer) are using the rest of the processing power to run medical simulations for cancer and Alzheimer’s research, in partnership with Folding@home and Alliance Outdoor. The billboards have been installed in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland and are feeding results back to scientists in America.
Folding@home, developed at the University of Pennsylvania, is a distributed computing project that enlists volunteer devices (including home computers) to help researchers better understand diseases such as breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, and even COVID-19. The program simulates how proteins fold and interact at an atomic level, an essential process in developing new treatments.
This wider rollout follows a trial in November, in which the program was loaded onto two billboards in Sydney and Melbourne with support from Alliance Outdoor and its preferred signage partner, Visual Exposure. It is the first time Folding@home has partnered with an Australian brand and its first ever partnership with a health insurer. The billboards featuired in the ini New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland.
Head of marketing and digital at nib, Chris Donald, stated, “We want Australians to realise their potential when it comes to health and wellbeing. Leveraging the unrealised potential in the computing power behind our advertising was a novel way to bring this to life.”
Greg Bowman, professor at University of Pennsylvania, added, “We’re thrilled to be working with nib. Using billboards to run medical simulations is something that has never been done before, so we’re very excited to see where this goes.”
This project follows nib and Dentsu Creative’s Potentially amazing campaign, which launched on September 1.
Credits:
Client: nib
Head of Marketing: Chris Donald
Brand Managers: Kirsty Tapscott & Prue Frost
Marketing Manager: Ryan Meredith
Creative Agency: Dentsu Creative Australia
Chief Creative Officer: Ben Coulson
Strategy Partner: Graham Alvarez-Jarratt
Art Director: Mathew Hine
Copywriter: Tosh Greenslade
Account Director: Josh Pelz
Account Manager: Emma Heazlett
Media: Alliance Outdoor
Business Director: Mollie Clyma
Account Manager: Harriet Newton
Head of Digital: Sam Yassa
Media: Visual Exposure c/- Civic Outdoor
Managing Director: Mick Harrold
