The world was falling out of love with science.

It was already happening long before COVID-19, before we discovered the existence of alternative facts, and before anyone felt the need to wear their “In Fauci We Trust” tee.

Science and critical thinking — those glorious tools that helped us double life expectancy and bring most of humanity out of abject poverty — were under assault.

As Ricky Gervais noted, not as a joke, “it was more important to be popular than right.” 

Dodging vaccinations was in. Believing in climate change was out (if it was ever in). And it was increasingly fashionable to sow doubt about how our food was grown. There weren’t any actual facts suggesting genetically modified crops posed health threats. Yet, anti-GMO sentiment was on the rise, ironically jeopardizing the ability for companies like Bayer to keep working on even better ways to grow food.

The myth of the rational audience was intoxicating.

If we can just educate the public and share the facts, then society will become more familiar with the technologies. More familiarity breeds more acceptance and eventually even advocacy. It’s simple. It’s logical. It makes sense. And it would never work. 

There are two reasons why. First, this is some seriously advanced genetics and molecular biology at work. If our strategy was dependent upon educating the general public on science that only a select few on the planet are equipped to fully understand, we were in trouble. The second barrier was perhaps even more daunting:

You can’t use reason to argue someone out of a position they didn’t use reason to arrive at.

Anti-science beliefs weren’t grounded in facts. They were born out of fears, opinions and popular ideologies. So we rose above the factual debate and created a campaign based on a higher order belief that we could all (or mostly all) agree on. 

Humanity is capable of incredible things. We can redefine what’s possible. Throughout history, we always have.

The “robot hand video” was only intended to be part of articulating and selling the concept. But it tested so well that the brand decided to run it in an introductory wave of assets. Conveniently, that gave us time to create the rest of the campaign.

The signature :60 film reminded audiences of that which separates humans from every other species on Earth. What followed was an integrated, global effort, including pre-roll video, social media, programmatic display, rich media placements, and native and owned content.

Bayer had many diverse audiences, but central to our perspective was this: the brand shouldn’t be different things to different people. The power of human ingenuity is as much a reason for society to believe in the importance of agricultural science as it is for farmer customers to believe in Bayer product innovations.

Film production took us to Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo with a companion photoshoot in both Brazil and the U.S. The extensive library of docu-style shots is still in use today, providing the brand a deep well from which to draw stories and assets.

Art Direction & Co-Creative Direction - Tyson Foersterling
Director & Photographer - Michael McCourt
Production - JOJX
Agency Producer - Beth Martychenko
Post-Production - Antidote Studio
Writing & Co-Creative Direction - Terry Stewart