Case Study: Celldex Therapeutics

Background

Celldex Therapeutics is a biotech company focused on antibody drug therapy. The company’s work, primarily targeted at oncology, attempts to exploit the immune system in order to increase the effectiveness of a therapy or combination of therapies. The company’s primary product, Precision Targeted Immunotherapy, has a diverse mechanism of action that can be difficult to explain, particularly in a short amount of time.

Challenge

Celldex employees who presented to stakeholders realized that static, slide-based presentations often fell short in communicating these complex concepts to investors, key partners and patients. In 2009, Celldex contacted XVIVO to discuss whether an animated presentation might meet their needs. Their goal was to enable people without a strong scientific background to better understand the company’s technology.

Solution

Celldex representatives were pleased to find out that rather than having to choose from stock video clips and cobble something together, they could work with XVIVO to create from scratch a completely custom presentation that precisely communicated the Celldex message. Throughout the process, the XVIO team met repeatedly with the Celldex team, making sure that the Celldex vision and concepts were understood and translated effectively to animation. The resulting animation, which explains incredibly complex concepts and technology in just over 4 minutes, can be found on the Celldex website.

Results

Ever since XVIVO developed the Precision Targeted Immunotherapy animation, Celldex has used it to explain the technology to a large number of investors, patients, and other important stakeholders. For specific uses, Celldex has been able to cut the animation into shorter clips to offer a brief preview or just touch on certain concepts.

Where Celldex presenters used to leave meetings wondering if the audience “got it,” now they are confident that the technology is explained in a dynamic and understandable way. In addition to the animation’s use on the Celldex website, the company has also distributed it on DVD at investor meetings, given it to physicians for viewing with their patients, and has even shown the animation at job fairs to help showcase the company to potential recruits. Celldex is considering development of the animation for use on tablets such as the iPad for even wider and more mobile distribution. The response from all of their audiences has been overwhelmingly positive.

Watch Animation.

“We feel the cost of the animation was well worth it, and we have had very positive feedback on it. It may be that the video was the critical piece to help an investor or patient make the decision to invest or join a trial. We’re still enjoying the work we (and XVIVO) did together, and we would absolutely work with them again.”
Senior Vice President and CSO, Tibor Keler, Ph.D.