British Heart Foundation
The ad we never expected to make
During Denmark’s opening soccer match against Finland, the world witnessed the shocking collapse of Christian Eriksen, and the work of those who performed lifesaving heroics on the field. If a 29-year-old international footballer can suffer a cardiac arrest on a world stage, then it can happen to anyone, at any time. Yet most people don’t have highly trained medical care teams immediately on hand, meaning that fewer than 1 in 10 people in the UK survive a cardiac arrest. At a time when CPR was in the news, we, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) had an important role to play in getting more Britons to become potential lifesavers.
Just 3 days later, we partnered with several agencies to create “The ad we never expected to make”, a high-impact marketing and PR campaign that put the BHF’s life-saving message at the center of the conversation: “Help save lives, by learning CPR”.
This entire partnership was delivered in just 3 days. These are some of our achievements:
- Between 12 June and 30 June, visits to the BHF’s ‘How to save a life’ website increased by 246%: Around 125.000 people had the opportunity to learn life-saving PCR
- The ad was seen live by 1.6 million viewers
- 80 pieces of news and TV coverage featured the ad, reaching a further 20% of the UK population
- In the week after the ad ran, BHF defibrillator and CPR kit sales increased +300%…
- …and though the ad didn’t prompt for donations, one-off donations increased by 17.4%
