Last summer, I got an education. I’d been working on a particularly unique brief, working with the team at Wellcome Trust to devise a way to communicate their often complex areas of work in climate change, mental health, and broader discovery research. It was… vast. Presumably, we all have a pretty vested interest in these subjects. But reading the news each day is a very different exercise to speaking to a room full of some of the UK’s leading scientists, with only headlines for reference. 

So I found myself at the bottom of a research well. Afternoons were spent reading journals about the urban health implications of shade equity, or why Dengue fever, a deadly and preventable disease, is falling through the cracks. I learned about the effects of sleep as a predictor for psychosis and other episodes of mental illness, and why antibiotic resistance became the leading cause of death globally in 2022. 

Fittingly, the research became a quiz - a simple ten question multiple choice quiz about global issues,  inspired by Hans Rosling’s ‘Factfulness Quiz’, that Wellcome can use at meetings and events to get people thinking - and questioning - what they know. It’s an accessible, interactive way of communicating complex information to stakeholders and other members of Wellcome’s massive network, showing the importance of the work while maintaining an element of optimism and surprise. By the time we reached our final version, the office was abuzz with surprising and little-known facts that we’d never thought to consider before. In other words, we’d all become ‘temporary experts’. 

This isn’t unusual, of course. But our consistent work in the science sector means that often campaigns or brand messaging must reach much further beyond a basic understanding of complicated subjects to meet a specialist, ambitious audience. Along the way, we’ve picked up a few pointers. 

Use the 80-20 rule for reading up

Back in 2022 we worked with Google DeepMind on the launch of the latest results from their AlphaFold AI program - which predicted the structure of hundreds of millions of proteins - almost all of the proteins known to science. It was an exciting world to be a part of - a launch that changed the scientific landscape almost immediately. 

This was a big, broad, story. So in order to tell that story, we needed to read up on research work across that same broad range of scientific work. And the enemy of clarity – and productivity – is overload. To maintain focus on the core problem, Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek recommends using an 80-20 analysis, or asking, ‘which 20% of these things I need to learn will get me 80% of the results that I want?’.

Basically, read with intention – and don’t feel bad about only reading the abstract and conclusion.

Get to know the real experts  

On AlphaFold we were tasked with coming up with a way to communicate its huge significance and potential impact, in a way that served both the scientific community and general public. We set out by boiling down AlphaFold’s purpose: accelerating research, multiplying possibilities, unlocking understanding and paving the way for new discoveries. Our idea was simple – to let the scientists already excited by AlphaFold’s capabilities tell its story themselves in varying formats across editorial and video. 

Finally, building on our own growing understanding, we commissioned carefully selected journalists to help identify the right interviewees; we looked for compelling human details to their stories alongside compelling scientific research. In the end, it was that mix – the sticky, relatable elements combined with the momentum of scientific discovery – that connected the science and tech worlds with the general public. 

… Because science is all about people anyway

More recently, we’ve been learning about the world of antibodies and immunoassays with Abcam, a global distributor of the two, and following a similar pattern. Antibodies are indispensable when it comes to research; they help scientists detect the presence or levels of proteins in order to diagnose conditions or further understanding.

We were helping Abcam with marketing antibodies and immunoassays to research scientists. How do you step into that specialist world, with a complicated product, and efficiently find a strategy that feels genuine? 

In our work with Abcam, it was time spent with the people actually doing the work that helped us get to the insight. 

“We spent a significant amount of time listening to working scientists, trying to understand the specific nuances of science as a career, and how to portray this realistically,” Tim Partridge, Co-Creative Director of Flying Object explains in an earlier post about his work on Abcam.

It’s what the scientists care about - their pains and joys - that led us to the campaign insight and idea. You can see more of our checklist campaign here. 

For each brief, we’ve become temporary experts in our own right. And, while we’re probably not going to pivot into discovering new vaccines any time soon, it’s genuinely fun being along for the ride and being immersed in worlds that are challenging, exciting and at the cutting edge of discovery. A pretty good day in the office, all told.