No more than 17 people out of 1,000 donate blood, leaving Romania at the bottom of blood donation ranking in Europe. At the same time, 8 out of 10 Romanians watch TV daily, especially during prime time. Most of them tune in to Antena 1, top TV station in Romania.

To help change the blood donation statistic, Antena 1 set to turn passive televiewers into active blood donors. So it used Observator, its prime time news program, as an activation tool to show how life without blood looks like by simply removing the red component from the screen’s RGB colors.

Within one week, the number of blood donors nationwide increased by 80%.

10 million Romanians witnessed the campaign on TV, while the aggregate number of views reached 160 million views. More than 4.5 million saw the campaign on Facebook or on other platforms. The widespread coverage generated an earned media equivalent of 1.2 million EUR.

The Romanian Health Minister of Health and the Secretary of State were compelled to react. They promised to open more transfusion blood centres (in January 2015, the second centre was opened) and signed a historic 300% budget increase for blood donations.

On 28th April 2014, Observator used for the first time the TV screen as an activation tool. Viewers noticed something on their screen was different. The red component from the screen RGB colors was missing. Andreea Berecleanu, the anchor woman, assured televiewers that nothing was wrong with their TV, and it’s just how life without blood feels like for thousands of Romanians in need of blood donations.

For one week, during prime time news, the red color was missing from Observator news. "Donate Red" was the main message of the campaign, urging people to give blood.

The end target was the Romanian Ministry of Health. If enough people would talk about the blood donation issues in Romania, if more people would give blood during the campaign, than the authorities would have no choice but to do something.

Antena 1 targeted millions of Romanians sitting in front of the TV. Observator, its prime time news program, was used as a Trojan Horse for good. Hijacking the TV watching experience for millions of Romanians at the same time for one week, live, during the news, would make everyone tuned in to understand how important blood donation really is.