Blood cancer is racist. A critically ill patient’s chance of survival depends on the number of registered stem cell donors who share their ethnicity.

As the most ethnically diverse country in the world, and a nation where one person is diagnosed with blood cancer every 28 minutes, Australia faces a critical shortage of donors for many of its minority groups.

To keep up with the urgent need for donors, we were tasked with registering 100,000 Australian stem cell donors aged 18-35 by 2026, with a focus on Australians with First Nations, Pasifika, South East Asian, and Middle Eastern ethnic backgrounds.

We were also tasked with engaging the Australian LGBTQIA+ community, which has historically been excluded from national blood/tissue donor recruitment campaigns.

Our casting brief was simple: “There’s no one like me.”

We searched the nation, street casting real Australians who all had one thing in common: there’s no one like them on Australia’s stem cell donor registry.

We looked for people with urgently-needed ethnic backgrounds, diverse cultural representation, and unique strengths –– from ballroom dance to drifting to rugby league. We also ensured we included people from the LGBTQIA+ community (which has historically been excluded from Australian blood/tissue donor recruitment campaigns).

Our cast is perhaps the most diverse group of people ever assembled in a commercial, Australian or otherwise, with incredible talent from the front to the background.