Blood Squad

Agency: Goodstuff with NHS Blood & Transplant, JOE Media / 23 Red / ITV

"An ageing population and blood donation shortage in the UK means that younger and male donors are vital to ensuring regular supplies are maintained. ITV2 partnered with NHSBT to help address this issue as well as leveraging this brand purpose to shift perceptions of ITV2 as a youth brand.

Despite a wealth of quantitative data naming reasons that people gave for not donating, we unearthed the real problem. Men were scared. We knew we had to address the emotional fear barrier to overcome functional excuses.

We borrowed social factors from Behavioural Economic to help circumvent the fear barrier and created the ITV2 Blood Squad, knowing that people are more likely to do something if “people we like and people like us” do it too.

Focusing on sociable and shareable content, and on a limited budget of £285k, we leveraged two key youth channels; cinema and social, tapping into social occasions around cinema at Halloween and creating sharable content for social, showing relatable talent giving blood.

The campaign demonstrated enough registrations to save up to 60,000 lives and a significant uplift in sentiment towards ITV2."