How bloody puddles shocked Russian pedestrians into donating blood

The Background

There must be something about blood campaigns that bring out the best in us creatively. I’d say Missing Type is one of the campaigns of the decade. And now this from Fonddonorov – or Donor’s Fund – to help encourage blood donation in St Petersburg.

The Big Idea

The charity created puddles of what looked like blood on the city streets. It effectively used the puddles as a powerful representation of how much blood on average is needed to save a life. Contextualising is not a new trick – but it’s an effective one.

What They Did

Very simply, it created these puddles of blood on major streets and accompanied them with blood drops that contained the messaging – both in Russian and English. The clever creative literally stopped people in their tracks so they’d confront the problem that there simply isn’t enough blood being donated in the city. The creative included a hashtag for social sharing and was supported with a campaign film of the public interacting with the puddles.

The Review

OK so it’s a stunt. But I like it for its simplicity. I imagine that there was also a media relations campaign behind it, but it’s hard to tell, not being a Russian speaker. But the idea was effective enough to travel beyond St Petersburg and into Britain so it must have been doing something right. It’s early days so I have no idea if it’s been effective in actively recruiting new donors, but my money says it will. It would make me stop, think, share, discuss and contemplate.

In Hindsight

There’s a tonne of stuff that could have been built around this, but this was clearly creative on a budget; some simple ambient activity supported with a film – it’s not going to break the bank. I think the film could have worked harder to set out the problem around shortages, rather than just showing the public’s reaction of the puddles. St Petersburg is also a city has also seen its fair share of blood shed. I wonder if it could have placed these strategically to also tie the campaign more specifically to the city and it’s rich and deep history.

So my Creative Moment score? 3. A simple bit of creative that I think will have done the job cost effectively.