2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

Because of the challenge of delivering a fully-fledged campaign aiming at getting people to take action and donate blood during the most media-saturated time of the year, through only a single channel: Facebook. Budget was relatively small compared to other brands running their Ramadan campaigns, and was to be divided among 6 countries. Despite this, careful use of Facebook’s interactive formats as well as influencer support allowed for high reach and interaction numbers. Most importantly, we ultimately achieved an increase in conversions that exceeded all expectations: a 91% increase in blood donations year over year.

Background.

Volume of blood donations falls over 40% in MENA countries during Ramadan, due to misinformed doubts about donating, as well as reduced on-ground presence on the part of blood banks. This leads to a yearly health crisis, as blood has a maximum shelf life of 42 days. Hence, our most immediate challenge was to educate people about blood donations and ultimately change the deeply ingrained public perception that donating blood while fasting or after fasting is unadvisable. Facebook endorsed the campaign as part of its yearly Hack For Good, in which they sponsor a campaign for a good cause. The only condition is that we use Facebook as our sole media channel for this campaign. The main challenge was breaking through the clutter of Ramadan campaigns on social with a relatively small media budget when compared to many other brands’ largest initiatives, which were airing at the same time.

Describe the creative idea/insights

Giving is one of the pillars of Ramadan, however people are focused on material donations, usually food, money, and clothes, while blood is overlooked. Beyond this emotional reframing of blood, we needed to weave in an informational component to alleviate existing safety concerns; so we reviewed the barriers to donating. Chief among them was the belief that it was unsafe to donate while or after fasting. Second was a lack of knowledge about blood’s conservation: people generally don’t know that blood can only be conserved 42 days, leading to complacency concerning the urgency of donating blood in this period. With this information, people would be equipped to donate and convince others to as well. Barring this information, our idea was simple: remind people that the act of giving is something they practice everyday, and that blood should urgently become a part of that practice. Because giving is in their blood.

Describe the strategy.

Our campaign was truly mass, spanning 6 countries, as we could not afford to be picky about whose blood we got; however we would have to break through the clutter of Ramadan ads convince people to give without resorting to the same emotional storytelling as other brands. We settled on a direct and informational content plan which would suit the way people use Facebook, considering that the average view time of content is 1.7 seconds, along with a consistent and recognizable call to action. We had two imperatives: highlight the crisis and reassure on the possibility of donating. We decided to run our ads in an Facebook adset which would ensure that our audience would consistently be exposed to our most impactful message. Moreover, the ads were run directly before and after the breaking of the fast (Iftar), when people would be deciding what to do with their evenings.

Describe the execution.

Because we were limited to Facebook as a media channel, we used the platform’s different formats and storytelling methods to their fullest extent. We created 3 10 second animations, to directly fill gaps in knowledge about the act of giving blood during Ramadan. We used a calendar-like long image to show the contrast of material donations with the small of blood donations made during Ramadan. We used Facebook AR Camera to let people edit their profile pictures and show their support for the campaign. All of this content was geo-targeted to people, and had a different “Learn More” button per country that would give them locally relevant information about donating. To normalize blood donations, we held a Facebook Live with two major celebrities (Hassan El Shafei & Sherine Abdel Wahab) having a normal conversation. After a few minutes, the camera zoomed out to reveal that Hassan was casually giving blood.

List the results.

Because of the awareness-centric nature of the campaign and the lack of tracking methods to blood donation centers, we only tracked reach as part of our communications KPIs, believing that getting our crucial information across would be all that is needed for people to take action. Our goal being to increase blood donations enough to cover the yearly fall of 40% in donations, we needed to increase donations 66% to make up for that gap. We reached 28 million people in 6 countries (Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia) over the month of Ramadan with a media budget of only 50k USD. Moreover, our influencers’ Facebook Live streams gathered 180 thousand views organically. Most importantly, we largely exceeded our donation target, with a 91% total increase in blood donations to Red Crescent blood banks across MENA year over year.