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Australia faced critical winter donor shortages as cold & flu season kept donors away. Past urgent PR pushes quickly disappeared in the 24hr news cycle, creating an "I'll get to it later" mindset. Without natural triggers, blood donation lacked urgency despite 1 in 3 Australians needing blood while only 1 in 30 donate.
We turned a little-known website feature—real-time blood supply levels—into a nightly national news story. By partnering with Australia's largest TV network, Seven, we transformed blood supply from an abstract concept into a dynamic alert system with the same urgency as bushfire threat levels. Rather than focusing on the solution (donating), we focused on the problem (blood shortage), making it impossible to ignore.
In an Australian media first, we integrated real-time blood supply updates into Seven's Tuesday Nightly News bulletins nationwide. Trusted local anchors delivered state-specific updates broken down by blood type and urgency level, leveraging television's unmatched authority to confer legitimacy and importance. We extended this across Seven's ecosystem with talent-fronted TVCs, AFL "blood rule" sponsorships, interactive BVOD QR codes, and 7news.com.au homepage takeovers—transforming blood donation into an unmissable national priority.
