"The Dynamic Blood Appointment" - NHS Blood and Transplant - 23red

Every day, thousands of people’s lives are saved or improved thanks to the generosity of blood donors. But NHS Blood and Transplant still needs 5,000 blood donors every day to make sure hospitals have the right supply. We needed to create a sense of urgency with a behaviour-change campaign to encourage people to donate now. 

Time and convenience are the key barriers to donating, so if we could let people know how many appointments were available today and how close their nearest blood donor centre was, then we could hope to overcome these barriers.

We developed a series of striking portraits of real-life blood recipients by renowned photographer Dylan Collard to illustrate the people who would benefit from blood donations, mirroring the demographic makeup of the area. The portraits were paired with information around how many people had booked to give blood that day, or week, where their nearest donor centre was, and how many appointments were available. 

Target audience

The campaign was aimed at new donors in local areas where an increase in blood donation was required. This meant that some areas were targeted based on rare blood types. 

Where it ran

Through a strategic media partnership with Clear Channel, we plugged into a network of over 100 dynamic digital out of home sites on high streets across England, in close proximity to permanent blood donor centres. Our data specialists worked with Clear Channel and anonymised data from NHSBT to create a dynamically updated system, making people aware of the volume of appointments available that day or week at their nearest donor centre. 

Impact

We saw a 33% increase in registrations overall compared to 20 days prior, a 42% increase compared to a period with no paid media running live and a 22% increase year on year.