Local PR, design and marketing consultancy, Liquid, is in the running for a top national award for its work for the Westfield Health British Transplant Games, which smashed targets for sign-ups to the Organ Donor Register.
The team is shortlisted in the Health Campaign category in the 2019 Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Excellence Awards.
The aim of the British Transplant Games, which was held in Birmingham in 2018, is to encourage people to sign the NHS Organ Donor Register (ODR). There are 6,000 people waiting for a transplant in the UK and three people die every day due to a shortage of donors. Ultimately, Liquid’s brief was to help save lives.
Liquid created a unifying message for the campaign, #ItTakes2, because it takes two minutes to register with the ODR online and it takes two people for a transplant (the donor and the recipient).
Highlighting powerful case studies centring on transplant patients, and recruiting celebrity ambassadors and supporters including television stars Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield, helped the campaign to gain 44 pieces of broadcast coverage including “Lorraine,” Sky News, Channel 5 News, Channel 4 News, ITV and BBC. The coverage figure was up 46% on the client’s target
Liquid also achieved 89 pieces of regional coverage and 25 national articles, including a front page story in the Daily Mirror.
Highlights included celebrating the collective achievement of the Games’ competitors, aged three to 82, by setting a new World Record – for the most transplant recipients in one room. For the opening ceremony at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Liquid gathered 724 children and adults, breaking the previous record of 438. The attempt was broadcast by BBC and ITV television news.
During the campaign, there was a 7.2 % increase in organ donor registrations, which broke the target by 75%. More than 76,0000 people signed the donor register in the West Midlands – 5,145 more than the previous year.
Lisa Downes, Channel Islands PR director Liquid, said: “It is hard to think of a more important project than promoting organ donation. Each donor can potentially help nine patients, so the ramifications of a campaign like this are huge.
“Our team rose to the challenge superbly, combining creative thinking and hard work to deliver outstanding results for our client. We are now looking forward to extending our work as we have been re-engaged for the British Transplant Games 2019 and appointed to work on the World Transplant Games.”
The CIPR Excellence Awards 2019 take place at the Honourable Artillery Company, London, on 25 June.
