When I first saw this commercial for the QIAcube, a rather nifty laboratory robot, I immediately thought of the dark and awkward filmmaking style of David Lynch.
Not only does the advertisement include haunting music and sparse, uncomfortable dialog, but also it leaves the viewer unsure of what the product can do.
Since I first saw the creepy video, I have wondered how something so bizzarre could ever be released by a large biotechnology company for public consumption.
My guess: Since Qiagen is a German company, and the film does not appear to have been made stateside, perhaps the folks in their marketing department made some sort of a miscalculation about the tastes of American consumers.
In case you were wondering, the QIAcube can be used to automate the rather laborious process of purifying biological molecules. At the core of Qiagen’s business are products called spin columns. They allow biochemists to easily isolate RNA, DNA, or proteins from cells or other messy mixtures. In fact, their products have cute names like RNeasy, a kit for purifying ribonucleic acids — stringy molecules that carry messages from the nucleus of a cell to the areas where proteins are made.
Spin column kits make labwork so easy that it feels a little bit like painting by numbers, but using a lot of them at once can be tedious and time consuming. The QIAcube is designed to perform those repetitive tasks, freeing up the hands of lab technicians and making them more efficient. That seems to be the point that they are trying to drive home in this heinous advertisement.
This is my debut as a film critic. What do you think of my assessment? If you know of any creepier science videos, please share them!
