Blood Donation Campaigns: Raising Awareness

“We showed New Yorkers that with each donation, someone could continue to write their story.”

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and creative partner Havas New York launched the Blood Bag Stories campaign in 2024 to raise awareness about the need for blood donations in the New York City area and to inspire people to become consistent blood donors. The campaign won the Gold Award for Print/Out-of-Home Campaign of the Year at the 2024 Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital shares its inspiration behind the campaign and marketing strategies below.

THE MISSION: To address New York City’s low blood supply, NewYork-Presbyterian sought to raise awareness that donors can save up to three lives with one donation and to call upon New Yorkers to donate blood and become consistent donors. We did this by using blood bags as the canvas to illustrate the personal impact a blood donation can have on the people who receive them and depict how they can go on to experience meaningful moments in life.

THE INSPIRATION: New Yorkers are proud of their city and rally to help one another. That’s why our media buy was focused on areas where real New Yorkers live, not just high-tourist areas of the city. Through high impact out-of-home placements, we inspired New Yorkers to see that a single donation could help fellow New Yorkers who held similar life dreams to themselves.

THE OUTREACH: Using 3,000+ digital out of home screens in placements such as subway panels, billboards, taxi and ride-share screens, salons, offices and gyms – as well as five dedicated wild postings in Manhattan and Brooklyn – our media buy intercepted New Yorkers in their day-to-day lives, grabbing their attention with compelling personal stories set against arresting visuals that inspired them to think about the impact they could have with just one simple act.

THE CALL TO ACTION: Stirring print placements, localized to the New York area, amplified the campaign. As New Yorkers caught up on their news in The New York Times, The New York Daily News and New York Magazine, they were prompted to take meaningful action upon seeing the visceral image of a used blood bag, a personal story and a clear call to action that helped them realize the power they held to save lives.

THE IMPACT: This initiative was part of a larger campaign – including a collaboration with chef Dominique Ansel to encourage blood donations with an exclusive chocolate bar – and in the months after the full campaign launched (March 26 - May 31, 2024), out of home, display and social placements helped drive over a 27,000% increase in website sessions on the NewYork-Presbyterian blood drive landing page as compared with the pre-launch period (January 5 - March 11, 2024).

“The We Give Blood Drive” Campaign

Target Audience: Young Adults Campaign

Strengths: Incentives/Grand Prize, Team Spirit, Social Media Storytelling

“‘The We Give Blood Drive’ united the Big Ten Conference and helped save lives.”

To increase blood donations and foster the next generation of blood donors, Abbott and the Big Ten Conference teamed up in 2024 to launch the first college conference-wide blood donation competition, pitting schools against one another to make a difference. Donations among 19-24-year-olds have dropped by nearly a third in recent years.

The national competition, which ran from Sept. 26 through Dec. 6, during the 2024 college football season, encouraged Big Ten students, alumni and fans to donate blood on behalf of any of the 18 Big Ten universities at blood centers across the country to help fight the largest blood shortage the U.S. has seen in a generation. Building a sustainable blood supply has been a challenge for years due to many factors, particularly an aging donor pool, as many baby boomers, the largest and most reliable donors of blood, are becoming unable to donate, noted Joana Araújo, senior global marketing director.

“The transfusion medicine community and Abbott’s efforts have contributed to creating positive momentum and visibility to the blood donation cause, helping to increase donors under 32 years old by 19% over the past three years,” Araújo said.

Araújo highlighted Abbott’s commitment to building a sustainable blood supply to ensure blood is available when and where it’s needed. Abbott has a proven track record of impactful donation campaigns. The company’s innovative donor recruitment approach began in 2016 with the global BE THE 1 campaign, featuring soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. The campaign was promoted through customer channels in more than 100 countries. Abbott subsequently launched its “Give Blood. Get Back.” campaign in 2021, partnering with social media influencers to target millennials and Gen Z, reaching more than 300 million people. From there, Abbott revolutionized the blood donation process through an innovative mixed-reality experience in collaboration with Blood Centers of America to enhance the blood donation process.

“We knew we could contribute even more,” Araújo pointed out. “That’s why we launched “The We Give Blood Drive” in 2024 as the next evolution of Abbott’s commitment to securing a sustainable blood supply. The initiative focused on tapping into the love and competitiveness of college football to engage students, fans and alumni across the nation to become lifelong blood donors.”

The inaugural friendly competition became a massive success with nearly 20,000 participants donating blood, impacting as many as 60,000 lives. Furthermore, more than half of the donations collected on college campuses came from first-time donors, and donations between 18–30-year-olds were nearly two times higher than the proportion of that segment within the U.S. population, Araújo noted.

Several activations across owned, earned and paid media took place to build awareness for the need for blood and encourage people to roll up their sleeves and donate— from a press conference at the Big Ten headquarters featuring football legend Tom Brady during the campaign launch to hosting on-site blood drives at each university to providing all U.S. blood centers with toolkits to promote the campaign in their fixed sites and mobile drives.

According to Araújo, a key element in the campaign’s success was its novel donor-led tracking approach on the Bigten.org/abbott digital platform. This strategy allowed the campaign to scale on a national level by reaching students, alumni and fans across the country. Each donor, independently of where they donated blood, could submit evidence of their donation and credit it to their favorite school on the campaign website. Collaboration with the industry, including AABB and U.S. blood centers that tapped into their existing marketing channels, helped to amplify the campaign and extend its reach, she explained.

“Blood centers across the country stepped up and made sure they leveraged this opportunity by being flexible,” she added. “We are always amazed at how this community is patient and donor centric, and we received overwhelmingly positive support and key insights that will help us continue to build upon the campaign in the future.”

“The We Give Blood Drive” campaign also harnessed the power of storytelling through videos from college students, Big Ten coaches and alumni highlighting the critical need to donate blood, as well as their personal reasons for donating. In one video, cancer survivor Haidyn Ulrich, who served as the Kid Captain for the Oct. 5 Ohio State game, shared her bout with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and emphasized how blood transfusions contributed to her recovery. “I am a true form of what blood donations can do for someone,” she stated.

Coming in first place with nearly 4,000 donors, the University of Nebraska took home the crown at the Discover Big Ten Football Championship Game and was awarded $1 million to advance student and community health.

“There are many reasons I’m proud to be a Nebraskan, and this is one of them,” stated Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, president, University of Nebraska system. “As a cardiac surgeon, I have seen time and time again how important life-saving blood products can be, and as the president of the University of Nebraska, I’ve also seen firsthand the generosity of spirit and passion for helping others shared by so many of our students, faculty and staff. It doesn’t hurt that Nebraskans also really like to win.”

Students and football fans can look forward to participating in the 2025 “The We Give Blood Drive” Big Ten competition, which is slated to return this fall.

“We’re excited to continue our partnership with Big Ten in 2025 to build on the momentum that we created this year and further support the transfusion medicine community’s life-saving work by highlighting and educating people on the importance of donating blood,” Araújo said.