29.09.16
Maintaining the missing type momentum
Source: NHE Sep/Oct 16
Jon Latham, NHS Blood and Transplant’s assistant director for donor services and marketing, discusses the early success of the Missing Type campaign.
This year NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) led an international blood donation campaign, Missing Type, to attract new donors.
When NHE talked to Jon Latham, assistant director for blood donor services and marketing at NHSBT, near the end of the campaign, which brought together 25 blood services across 21 countries, more than 18,500 people across England had registered to become new blood donors – twice the normal level.
Latham told NHE that the campaign – first held by NHSBT in England and North Wales in 2015 – had been “very successful”, especially after it started trending and gaining traction on social media.
Throughout the campaign As, Bs and Os, the letters of the main blood groups, disappeared in everyday and iconic locations around the globe. And patients from around the world have thanked blood donors in a moving video to highlight that in a world without As, Bs and Os, they would not be here. In England, the focus was on a particular need for more young blood donors and more black and Asian donors.
Across social media, there were over 54,000 mentions of #MissingType globally across seven days from brands such as Google, Cadbury’s, the Royal Australian Navy, Innocent Smoothies, Tesco and Toronto Police.
Discussing the success and challenges of the campaign, Latham said: “This was a global campaign, so it was quite hard to control that message across quite a large territory of 21 countries. We also ran this at the same time as the Olympics; I probably wouldn’t do that again.
“From a global point of view, there are some lessons to be learned. But I think from an England point of view, we worked very well with our UK partners.
“If the campaign continues to go as it did last year, we will continue seeing against our normal benchmark an increase in people registering and coming forward to donate for quite a while. These campaigns have quite a slow burn about them and people can wait.”
A number of high-profile brands and organisations backed the campaign, with Microsoft, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT, Boots and Manchester City, amongst others, featuring in a TV advert that has also been seen across social media.
“Having created that awareness across the whole [health] sector, we need to take advantage of that by talking regularly with potential partners and getting opportunities to push our messaging out through their preferred channels,” said Latham.
“We had a lot of help from the health community, partly because they had seen what we had achieved last year. I think, for us, we have been proud to lead something on behalf of the NHS which has gone round the world.
“This is truly an area we have led the world on, and used our marketing skills to create something bigger than our individual parts.”
Prior to the start of the campaign, NHSBT said the number of people becoming donors and giving blood for the first time in England decreased by 24.4% in 2015 compared to 2005.
“From 2015-16 we made a dent in reducing that figure, but there is still quite a long way to go,” said Latham. “We need 200,000 people every year just to replace the ones who leave. It is a little like the Forth Bridge, we are always having to paint it.”
As well as supporting NHS organisations to promote the Missing Type campaign, Latham called on NHS staff to come forward and support the efforts: “After all, we are all members of the public, even though we work for the NHS, and we are all part of the community who need blood.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
W: www.blood.co.uk
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