LIFE SAVING STORIES

TitleLIFE SAVING STORIES
BrandRED CROSS
Product/ServiceCPR TRAINING
Category B02. Non-profit / Foundation-led Education & Awareness
Entrant 180 AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation 180 AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Production 180 AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Post Production MASSIVEMUSIC Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Credits
Name Company Position
Kalle Hellzen 180 Amsterdam Chief Creative Officer
Koen Gerretsen 180 Amsterdam Art Director
Paul de Haas 180 Amsterdam Sr. Copywriter
Pol Hoenderboom 180 Amsterdam Executive Creative Director
Nick van Wagenberg 180 Amsterdam Jr Creative
Nevil van Outheusden 180 Amsterdam Jr Creative
Tom Bremerkamp 180 Amsterdam Art Director
Eric Ytsma 180 Amsterdam Planning Director
Jenny Leung 180 Amsterdam Account Director
Gandy Mansour 180 Amsterdam Animator & editor
Laura Klaassen 180 Amsterdam Producer
Marloes van den Berg 180 Amsterdam Head of Production
Auke Riemersma Massive Music Sr. Music Producer

Background

Every week, around 300 people in the Netherlands suffer from cardiac arrest outside hospitals, in public spaces like shopping malls. Youngsters are ‘overpopulated’ in these spaces, but often don’t know how to act when every minute counts. However, they are the perfect first responders, because they’re often physically fit enough to perform exhaustive tasks in case of a medical emergency. That’s why the Dutch Red Cross aims to find new ways to teach youngsters the basics of first aid and CPR, and create general awareness about the subject. The Netherlands is one of Europe’s leading countries when it comes to smartphone penetration (93%) and amongst youngsters it is 94%. Of all 12 - 25 year-olds, 96,8% are on social media, and 82% of all 15 - 19 year-olds spend 143 minutes a day on Instagram. So, to reach and teach them, Instagram was to be the main medium for interaction.

Describe the strategy

Young people are a hard to reach audience. Our brand isn’t very appealing to them, and they have a short attention span. Targeting them requires something more engaging. Something playful and fun, that gets them to interact with the brand in a way they know. Instagram is their #1 social platform, so we studied typical Instagram behavior. We noticed it’s become common behavior to endlessly flick through Instagram Stories, tap after tap after tap. Our objective was to break through this behavior, which is often perceived as negative, and turn it into something meaningful. During development, Danish soccer player Christian Eriksen collapsed on the field. Only because his team acted so quickly and knew what to do, Eriksen lives to tell the story. This created a unique, short window to reach our audience. With no time to lose, we launched Life Saving Stories only two days later.

Describe the execution

We created animated Stories, in which a character suffers from cardiac arrest and has to be resuscitated using CPR. We positioned the character’s heart on the right side of the screen, so every tap on his heart leads to the next Story. In each Story, the heart beats only once, together with one musical beat. After that, the heart rate drops and the music slows down, warning you to start tapping again. By tapping in the right rhythm, you connect all the single beats together. This creates a seamless song and keeps the character alive. You’ve now learned the right rhythm for CPR. Even positioning your hands and performing rescue breaths was integrated into the Stories with Instagram’s emoji sliders. We placed the Stories on Instagram organically, and linked to it from different accounts. Free publicity and PR were therefore important factors to turn this into a success.

List the results

Without any media budget, Life Saving Stories was all over the news. From the Dutch children’s news to the more serious national 8 ‘o’clock evening news, and from radio programs to all major online news outlets. Everyone was talking about it, both offline and online. We reached thousands of youngsters on Instagram, and millions through free publicity. Plus: - Following for the Red Cross First Aid Instagram account went up by 43%. - 65% of followers are now between 18 and 34. Exactly our desired target audience. - Interactions on the account even went up by a staggering 12,150% - Contributed to a rise of 400% in demand for offline CPR courses. Now, in the event of cardiac arrest, we all have a bigger chance of having a life-saver around.