Blood Box
Australian Red Cross Blood Service
Issue 2 | July 2008
Agency
M&C Saatchi Sydney
Creative Team
Dave King - Creative Director and writer;Gavin McLeod - Art Director;Max Landrak
Production Team
Jennifer Cuthbert - Production Manager
Other Credits
Veronica Greaves - Client
Date
February 2006
Background
The Australian Red Cross Blood Service has a display stand at various University Campuses during Orientation week (the time when students settle in to University and spend most of the time partying). The challenge was to get students across Australia to take time out of their Orientation week schedule and give an hour of their time to donate blood. An incredibly difficult ask when you consider the alternatives open to students during O week and the fact that most donation rates drop off dramatically for 18 to 25-year-olds.
Idea
Many students actively want to support worthy charities. But most charities ask for financial support, something students are generally short of. This leaves students feeling that there is little they can do to make a difference. The Australian Red Cross Blood Service and M&C Saatchi Sydney chose to show them that they were wrong, that they could in fact make a huge difference. In Australia, one of the most common ways for charities to ask for money is through donation boxes. Their strategy therefore was to show a donation box, not full of money, but full of blood, highlighting that you could make a huge difference without giving a cent. After all, money isn't everything.
Results
While The Australian Red Cross Blood Service get a lot of new donors at the eligibility age of 16, donations from university students (18 to 25) drop away dramatically. So to get more than 1,100 donations during this promotion was a sensational result.
Target Audience
Students aged 18 to 25
Our Thoughts
Ideas are nothing more and nothing less than new combinations of familiar elements. So the idea here is simply to combine a collecting box, usually filled with coins, with nice runny blood. The stuff the Australian Red Cross need more of. That’s all you have to do to come up with an award winner. Look for interesting combinations. Apparently the hardest part of getting this idea up and running was finding a chemical goo that looked like blood, behaved like blood but which didn’t congeal, go crusty and turn black.