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First National Blood Donation Campaign Launched

September 13, 2004

Ad Council’s Campaign Targets Youth

NEW YORK, September 13, 2004 – The Advertising Council today joined blood banking organizations, including the Bay Area’s Blood Centers of the Pacific, to launch the first-ever national public education and awareness campaign about blood donation. Geared towards young adults, the public service advertising (PSA) initiative is designed to raise awareness about the importance of and need for blood donation to foster a new generation of lifelong blood donors.

Each year, nearly five million Americans need a life saving blood and critically low inventories nationwide frequently result in public appeals for donations. In the Bay Area, about 60 percent of the population is eligible to donate blood, but only 4 percent does. As additional donor restrictions are implemented and the population ages, the country could lose more and more willing donors, which could cause an even greater threat to our national blood supply.

This thought-provoking new campaign was developed to catch the attention of young adults, especially 17-24 year olds, to increase awareness of the need for regular blood donation and to set the foundation for lifelong donor behavior. Created pro bono by ad agency Euro RSCG Worldwide New York, the campaign includes television, radio, outdoor and Internet advertising and directs young adults to visit a new, comprehensive Web site, www.bloodsaves.com, where they can learn more about the need for a robust blood supply and obtain information and resources to help them donate blood in their community.

According to Nora Hirschler, MD, President of Blood Centers of the Pacific, the Bay Area needs to collect more than 800 pints of blood each day to meet patients’ needs. “We have some of the latest and best medical technology and know-how here in the Bay Area, yet with that comes a need for a robust blood supply.”

Blood Centers of the Pacific encourages media across California to support this campaign by running the PSAs often to inspire young adults to become regular blood donors.

“The percentage of Americans that are eligible to donate blood, but don’t, is astounding. We need to move away from the culture of blood donation under crisis appeals because it is the blood that’s already on the shelves that helps save lives,” according to Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of The Advertising Council. “I am confident that this provocative, empowering advertising will show our nation’s young adults how easily they can save up to three lives and encourage them to become lifelong regular blood donors.”

Titled “Save the World,” the new campaign features young adults discussing the extreme lengths they have gone to try to make a difference in the world in an effort to show how donating blood is an easy way to positively and significantly make an impact. Each PSA concludes with the tagline, “Saving the world isn’t easy. Saving a life is. And just one pint of blood can save up to three lives.”

Per the Ad Council model, all of the PSAs are being distributed to more than 20,000 media outlets nationwide this week and will run and air in advertising time and space that is donated by the media.

“We know that young people today feel a certain futility in their ability to affect the world they live in, and we wanted to use that as a leverage point in advertising to show these young adults that giving blood is an easy way to make an incredibly important difference - saving lives,” said Kevin Roddy Partner, Executive Creative Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide New York.

Blood Centers of the Pacific

Blood Centers of the Pacific is a nonprofit, community-based organization that provides blood to 40 hospitals throughout Northern California.

The Advertising Council

The Ad Council is a private, non-profit organization with a rich history of marshalling volunteer talent from the advertising and media industries to deliver critical messages to the American public.