England rugby stars and the NHS have allied on a new cause campaign – #BleedForEngland – to leverage Rugby World Cup fever in order to drive blood donation across the country.
The NHSBT (National Health Service Blood & Transplant)’ ‘Give Blood’ initiative has linked with former members of England’s Rugby World Cup winning team – including Martin Johnson, Ben Kay, Matt Dawson, Jason Leonard and Johnny Wilkinson – from – to back a new campaign to encourage more people to donate blood.
The new campaign shows stars – such as fly half Jonny Wilkinson – giving blood for the first time and is led by a TV commercial launched on the day the Rugby World Cup kicked-off that shows a dying rose revived by blood drop with a John Hurt voiceover explaining how just 3% of the UK population currently gives blood.
The commercial is supported by press and poster executions (also featuring players from England’s 2003 World Cup winning squad), while the online and digital strand is led by a web film called ‘The Making Of The Rose’.
Initially teased across digital platforms in the days leading up to the start of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the campaign is also amplified across digital platforms (including a set of seeded banners and buttons) and on social media both through the NHS’s own accounts and those of the participating players themselves.
Are you ready? One more day until we launch #BleedForEngland pic.twitter.com/WoO3HAY4aM
— GiveBlood NHS (@GiveBloodNHS) September 15, 2015
I'll be glued to RWC for nxt 6wks except for when I register to #BleedForEngland @NHSGiveBlood http://t.co/XXireZDd9x pic.twitter.com/T1DWnbagDB
— Neil Back MBE (@NeilBack) September 10, 2015
All is finished on the Rugby World Cup Campaign for NHS blood & Transplant #BleedForEngland @SquireStudio@PabloAgency pic.twitter.com/9fGeAhO6s4
— deanethrussell (@deanethrussell) September 15, 2015
The objective behind the RFU/NHS campaign is to encourage 100,000 new donors across England where less than 3% of people donated in the last year.
In a neat slice of synergy – one between agency and campaign rather than brand and campaign), this is the first work from new agency Pablo London and former England rugby star Ben Kay (who appears in the ads) is one of Pablo’s founders.
Comment
Teams using tournaments to promote blood donation drives is an increasingly common tactic in the contemporary sports cause campaign playbook.
This England Rugby initiative follows in the footsteps of similar campaigns such as that leveraging the FIFA World Cup in 2014 when winning German stars worked with the Bundesliga and the German Red Cross on the ‘Give Blood, Give Power’ campaign (see case study), as well as official FIFA partner Johnson & Johnson’s ‘care Inspires Care’ campaign in the 12 Brazilian host cities (see case study and more innovative initiatives like Brazilian side Vitoria FC’s blood drive based around the red stripes in the team’s strip (see case study).
Links
NHS #BleedForEngland Twitter:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/bleedforengland
NHS Give Blood YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/NHSGiveBlood
NHS Give Blood Website:
NHS Give Blood Twitter:
https://twitter.com/GiveBloodNHS
Pablo
