How do you compel action when your cause is just one among many worthy causes?
Revisit your traditional approaches and move beyond cliché.
Interval was approached by LifeSource, the organ procurement organization that serves Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota in 2006, to help promote the launch of www.DonateLifeMN.org, Minnesota’s first online registry for future organ and tissue donors. The organization’s leadership had a concern that previous campaigns centering on the positive stories of those who had successfully received a donated organ weren’t effective in convincing people to become registered donors. Instead, the success stories seemed to be creating a sense of complacency, that perhaps the issue of organ donation didn’t require the effort of an individual to register as a donor. From this perspective, Interval created a campaign that highlighted the emotion tied to spending time on a donor waiting list to help demonstrate the need to register. To help break through the clutter of other worthy cause messaging, the campaign included a unique twist.
The campaign began with teaser advertisements that featured people on “The List” without divulging what “The List” was or that it was related to organ donation (or anything medical in nature). The goal was to create buzz using a limited budget, and the teaser campaign resulted in numerous blog references and more than 2,500 visitors to the “What is the List?” website. The origin of “The List” was revealed following the teaser campaign with a single ad featuring Alexa Kersting, a nine-year-old girl who died waiting on “The List.” The campaign explained that, like Alexa, more than 90,000 people are currently waiting for organ donation, there is a shortage of available donors, and that people die while waiting on the list for an organ donation. The call to action for the campaign was for people to help by visiting www.DonateLifeMN.org and registering to become an organ donor. During the first month of the promotional phase, LifeSource experienced a 55% increase in registered new donors compared with the prior month’s registrations, and an 88% increase in donor registrations during May 2006 compared with those in May 2005. More online registration inquiries were generated through “The List” campaign in that first month than through in-person workplace promotions accumulated during the previous three years combined. The campaign also garnered national recognition, winning the Judge’s Choice award in the Aster Awards and a gold award in the Healthcare Marketing Report Advertising Awards.
