Health fund nib is using the computing power of digital billboards to help with medical research.
Most digital billboards use only half of their CPU’s processing power, so leading Australian health brand nib and advertising agency Dentsu Creative have partnered with Folding@home and Alliance Outdoor to put that remaining 50% to work.
Folding@home, developed at the University of Pennsylvania, is a computer program that helps scientists develop new therapeutic treatments. The program is available to download for anyone who wants to take part and simply runs in the background on volunteers’ home computers, crunching data while they use other programs.
Nib has worked with Dentsu Creative and media partners to load the Folding@home program onto the computers found inside digital billboards across using spare processing power to run medical simulations for cancer and Alzheimer’s research, feeding the results back to scientists in America.
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.
This is the first time Folding@home has partnered with an Australian brand and its first ever partnership with a health insurer.
Nib head of marketing and digital Chris Donald said leveraging the unrealised potential in the computing power behind our advertising was a novel way to bring this to life.
"We want Australians to realise their potential when it comes to health and wellbeing," he said.
University of Pennsylvania professor Greg Bowman said they'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," he said.
Alliance Outdoor group business director Mollie Clyma said the team loved working with Folding@Home, nib, Dentsu Creative and EssenceMediacom for the nib campaign.
"We look forward to tracking the performance of this technology and how it can continue to evolve partnerships for us in the future," she said.
This project comes off the back of nib and Dentsu Creative’s 'Potentially Amazing' campaign, which launched on September 1.
Credits:
nib:
Head of Marketing & Digital: Chris Donald
Senior Brand & Acquisition Manager: Kirsty Tapscott
Brand and Communications Manager: Prue Frost
Marketing Campaign Manager: Ryan Meredith
Creative Agency: Dentsu Creative
Chief Creative Officer: Ben Coulson
Strategy Partner: Graham Alvarez-Jarratt
Senior Art Director: Mathew Hine
Senior Copywriter: Tosh Greenslade
Senior Account Director: Josh Pelz
Account Manager: Emma Heazlett
Media Company: Alliance Outdoor
Group Business Director: Mollie Clyma
Senior Account Manager: Harriet Newton
Head of IT: Sam Yassa
Media Signs Company: Visual Exposure C/O Civic Outdoor
Managing Director: Mick Harrold
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