Brazil has very few organ donors per capita. We needed to generate a public debate on the issue and, hopefully, increase the number of donors. The strategy was to bring the matter of organs donation into people’s daily lives and stir with their emotions. The Brazilian Association of Organ Transplantation is a non-profitable organization, so the campaign should be efficient even with no budget. Therefore, we used the Facebook as “fire starter” –posting is totally free –, and created an idea that had the power to go viral and spread along other mediums by itself, with no media costs.

People are not shocked by the burying of organs that could save lives. But they are by the burying of a luxury car. To change that, we asked a very famous and eccentric Brazilian billionaire, Chiquinho Scarpa, to post on his Facebook page that he would bury his half a million Dollars Bentley in the yard of his mansion, inspired by the pharaohs.

People were revolted. The national media took the bait and strongly criticized Scarpa’s decision on every TV channel, radio station, newspaper, magazine and internet portal in the country, making a 22 Million Dollar integrated campaign for ABTO for free. In the burial event, with the media broadcasting live, the organs donation campaign was revealed, achieving results way beyond the expected. Posters, prints and radio spots followed, all aired for free with the newly gained support from the media.

Organs donations increased by 31.5% in just 1 month. More than 172 Million people impacted on social networks alone, through only 6 Facebook posts. It generated 22 Million Dollars of earned media with all of the spontaneous coverage on TV (live broadcast included), radio, newspapers, magazines and Internet portals, with ZERO investments in media. The production cost was only 6 thousands Dollars – that’s the total cost of the whole campaign. It ranked number 1 in Brazil on Trending Topics and number 2 in the world.