1 in 4 of us will depend on donated blood in order to stay alive. Yet millions of pints cannot be collected due to an outdated, discriminatory law that puts a blanket ban on all sexually active gay and bisexual men from donating.

UNILAD’s brand goal is to share brave ideas by shining a light on little known issues. The platform has a broad audience, reaching 60% of Facebook users, with very diverse views. Our brief was to get this audience talking to each other with an idea that championed a fairer, more equal society.

Our objective was to raise awareness of blood donation discrimination in order to increase public pressure for change, with an ultimate goal of changing UK Blood Donation legistlation.

Our campaign ran across UNILAD’s ecosystem and across London during Q4 2019.

The total budget was £40,087.

UNILAD is a media platform with a hugely broad audience, reaching 60% of Facebook users, with very diverse views. The platform uses its editorial power to shed a light on provocative issues, by sharing brave ideas.

We partnered with FreedomToDonate to create a visceral, awareness-driving campaign using real human blood donated by gay and bisexual men, that pressurised the government to change the law.

We opened The Illegal Blood Bank: the world’s first blood bank for gay and bisexual men.

In just one day, we collected enough blood to save 78 lives.

Then we used it to make a statement the government couldn’t ignore. On the first day of work for the UK’s new government, we exhibited the real human blood in adshels outside parliament and across London. Our message was simple: This blood is on the Government’s hands, but the other 5000 pints pledged online don’t have to be.

We leveraged the unique feature of our campaign - real human blood - in the most visceral way possible, to drive maximum awareness and impact. Our key branding elements, such as the logo, sharable visual for social media and all physical collateral were all created using it.

The visual brand world brought a hard-hitting clinical edge to the campaign, taking cues from medical blood bag labels to give our emotive message a simple scientific feel that would help further remove bias from the discussion.

Using real human blood collected from the team, we created a powerful symbol for our cause that our supporters could share with pride.

Ensuring that real human blood featured in every element of our design work meant that we constantly, viscerally reminded people of our campaign’s hard-hitting fundamental nature.

We raised awareness, increasing pressure for change:

· Awareness of ‘blood donation discrimination’: 81% exposed vs 65% control.

· 62% of those who saw our content were ‘Extremely in favour’ of changing the policy, vs 46% control.

We sparked action:

· 5000+ pints pledged.

· The campaign prompted an NHS response, explaining they will investigate ‘individualised risk assessment’.

We successfully piloted a new, safer screening process for blood donation:

· We implemented and piloted a process that can feasibly be rolled out.

· In one day, utilising ‘individualised risk assessment’, UNILAD collected enough blood to save 78 lives.

· All the blood was deemed 100% safe to use.

We achieved our ultimate goal:

· On 14th December 2020, the UK government changed their policy, in a landmark law change. This groundbreaking individualised risk-based blood donation policy is the most forward-thinking policy for gay and bisexual men in the world.