We were invited to exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria, to showcase the power and potential of creativity. And we wanted to demonstrate how creativity has the power to transform human behavior, so we used the opportunity to create a real-time social experiment that would help solve an impossible challenge.

Shockingly, in Australia, only 3% of the population donate blood - yet the way we ask for donations hasn't changed in decades. Blood donation campaigns all use the same, tired method of pulling on heartstrings. It's clearly not effective, so what if another approach could improve our chances with the 18-80yo Australians who can donate blood?

Shockingly, in Australia, only 3% of the population donate blood - yet the way we ask for donations hasn't changed in decades. Blood donation campaigns in Australia all use the same, tired method of pulling on heartstrings. It's clearly not effective, so what if another approach could improve our chances with the 18-80yo Australians who can donate blood?

We wanted to discover why only 3% of Australians donated blood. So, we created an art exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria that functioned as a real-time experiment to find out what really makes people bleed.

We created five pieces of communication across five different media channels – each one focused on eliciting a different human emotion: ‘joy’, ‘anger’, ‘sadness’, ‘fear’ or ‘disgust’.

Visitors could vote via QR code on which piece moved them most, arming Aussie blood donation service, Lifeblood, with new data on how best to convert Aussies into blood donors.

We created an exhibition that blurred the lines between art and advertising.

Five pieces of communication were designed to elicit the five core emotions, as designated by renowned psychologist, Dr Paul Ekman (The expert behind Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’). “Joy”, “Anger”, “Sadness”, “Fear” and “Disgust”.

We worked with artists and filmmakers to create the pieces in our exhibition, including:

A billboard which provoked SADNESS.

A social film that provoked JOY

Bill posters provoked ANGER

Digital OOH provoked FEAR.

And an amusing narrative film provoked DISGUST.

Visitors could then vote via QR code on which piece moved them most, arming Aussie blood donation service Lifeblood with new data on how best to convert Aussies into blood donors.

We collated all our data and shared the findings with Lifeblood to help them convert more Aussies into blood donors.

Over 2000 exhibition attendees voted on the piece that motivated them to donate blood most.

15% of them signed up to donate blood on the spot. Which was a 12% increase from the current average of 3%.

The exhibition was also covered by mainstream media.

The exhibition also won the prestigious “Rigg Design Prize”, which is Australia's highest design accolade, held every three years.