The campaign was aimed at raising awareness on blood donation because Namibia suffers from a blood shortage. Blood donation is about sharing life and with the insight that people share a lot online we decided to intercept that process with our message.

We united Namibia’s major news and entertainment websites and for the first time, took over all their share buttons. Whenever someone tried to share a post, a message highlighting the need for blood donors appeared.

Normal PR practice is to have an event and if the media deems it news worthy they would publish it. We took it a step further and solicited the media and made them an interactive part of the communication. With a one-day drive we managed to increase traffic to the WHO page and message was shared worldwide.

On World Blood Donor Day (14th June 2014) we wanted to be right in front of our audience that used online platforms. Donating blood has a strong association with sharing, so we capitalized on the insight that as much as people share online, they are not as keen of sharing blood. While they were browsing Namibia’s major’s news and entertainment websites and wanted to share a post, a message highlighting the need for blood donation appeared. They had the option of ‘Don’t Care’ or ‘Share’. This once off activation allowed them go to WHO’s Facebook, learn more about blood donations and to share the need for blood donations with all their friends via their social networks – the message then disappeared allowing them to continue to the original content.

We had 250% increase in traffic on the World Health Organization Facebook page and over 7 Million people saw the campaign online. With a minimal production cost, we generated over 1 Million Namibian dollars in free media earnings.