NGen Award

TITLE: Friends Saving Friends
ENTRANT: Sam Geer
AGENCY: MediaCom
CLIENT: Australian Red Cross Blood Service

OBJECTIVES
The Australian Red Cross Blood Service presented NGen members with the challenge to develop an emotive idea and communications strategy to build on the 2009 Year of the Blood Donor platform and turn this awareness into action in 2010. They were charged with prompting long term social change to generate at least 21,000 donations every week, with a campaign budget of $1 million.

CAMPAIGN
MediaCom’s Sam Geer refined the core target to 16 to 29-year-olds, identifying this group as the most likely to influence current and future generations, and donate for many years to come.

His “Friends Saving Friends” idea involves creating a Facebook application that “digitally kills” a user’s friends unless they “digitally donate”. When “digitally donating” the user is taken to a microsite that encourages them to donate blood, while a Facebook message is sent to the friend they “saved”.

A heavyweight ad campaign through Facebook is to be used to push people to download the application. PR and geographically targeted print ads listing recent “deaths” will support the Facebook campaign. Street press, mX, NW and Famous are some of titles to be used.

The media strategy saw commuters targeted in mX and branded bottled water was distributed in train station commuter car parks. Stay-at-home mums, workers and retirees were targeted at home on the internet and daytime TV, while white collar drivers were targeted in secure carparks near high-rise offices, on radio while driving and with roadside billboards.