To whom are they selling…?

IN the past few years I have found myself on the receiving end of some fairly bizarre advertising campaigns from large biotech companies.

First there was MWG Biotech (as they were called at the time), who make short stretches of single-stranded DNA called oligonucleotides, which many of us use in our experiments. They decided to market these using cartoon characters, the chief of whom was ‘Olly Oligo”. This was the first time I asked myself, ‘who the hell are they aiming this at?’

Then we were assaulted with the extremely kitch ‘PCR Song‘ from Bio-Rad. Thanks for this guys, it took weeks to try and forget it.

Then came Eppendorf’s ‘It’s called epMotion‘ music video for a robotic liquid handling station; a deliberately tongue-in-cheek boy-band styled affair, also available as a ring tone. I wasn’t swayed.

The most recent shockers, inciting this post, are from the Biotech giant Roche, who are marketing a means of monitoring cell cultures using electrical impedance measurements, xCELLigence. However, they’ve gone for a more obvious tack. They’ve done a rock video.

Actually, they loved it so much, they did a second rock video. Why do just one when you can have two videos for twice the price?

I’m actually now speechless.