The “Donation Week” was a special event created to generate a direct response: people donate blood and raise Hemocentro de São Paulo’s blood banks.

During this week, instead of those traditional “simple snacks”, donors got gourmet sandwiches, all developed by 6 top Brazilian chefs. Each day of the week a different chef cooked the meal.

The insight came from the “Restaurant Week”, a gourmet event that takes place time after time in many Brazilian cities, with huge success. The event was activated by an advertising campaign and huge PR. The call to action was to invite people to donate blood during that week and get a gourmet meal. One donates, one gets the sandwich: a direct response from the consumer.

All four main opening TV Networks from Brazil (Rede Globo, SBT, Record and Gazeta) aired news about the event. The biggest one, Rede Globo, also got a reporter live at the event during its lunchtime News. The second network in importance, got a reporter live at the event from Monday to Friday. She also donated blood live during the lunchtime News. Radios, websites and newspaper also published about the event.

First we invited 6 top Brazilian chefs to create special meals and join the campaign. Then, a week before the event, we launched an ad campaign promoting the “Donation Week” and calling people to donate blood and try those special meals. During the week, we got a huge PR to promote the event. It longed six days, from November 24th to November 29th. The campaign was a huge success and run according to the original plan.

Completely successful, the action performed a raise of 107% of donators in just one week, almost 5 thousand new volunteers. For a country where only 1,8 % of the population is used to donating blood, that’s a historical record.