Blood donations save lives, but a post-pandemic decline forced the American Red Cross to declare its first blood shortage crisis in over a decade. The situation got so bad that doctors were being forced to decide which patients got blood, and which didn’t. The ARC urgently needed to drive blood donations among the general population (35 to 54) and first-time donors (18 to 34). The latter is a group that is notoriously fickle and difficult to galvanize. To attract first-time donors, we needed to do something that would break into the cultural zeitgeist. As we looked at pop culture, we realized that a lot of perfectly good blood is wasted in horror movies. So, we teamed up with “Scream Queen” Neve Campbell to create a fun and entertaining PSA campaign that encourages viewers to donate blood.

Known for her starring role in one of the most successful horror movie franchises in history, we partnered with Neve Campbell to create a funny PSA that leans into the very predictable ways that horror movie characters tend to die... and waste perfectly good blood that could otherwise be donated. We called the PSA “A Bloody Nightmare”, not because of the horror scenes that we’re showing, but because there’s a blood shortage and not enough people are donating blood. A fact that is underscored by the important message our PSA delivers; 50% of Americans like watching blood spilled in movies, but only 3% actually donate it. Blood isn’t just for movies, it saves lives.