The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is a charity that is working towards a world free from the fear of heart and circulatory diseases: conditions like heart diseases, stroke, vascular dementia, and diabetes.

It currently funds over half of all non-commercial UK research into treatments and cures for these diseases.

But that’s not enough. The overall investment in research is disproportionately low compared

to the burden of suffering.

Collectively, heart and circulatory diseases are the UK’s biggest killers, responsible for

1 in 4 British deaths.

However, the total amount spent on research into these conditions is less than half of that invested in researching cancer.

Furthermore, the BHF’s life-saving research is solely dependent on support from the public.

If the donations stop, so does the research.

Traditional advertising formats can be limited by how much detailed information they can communicate, especially when budgets are tight.

In 2020, the BHF’s needed to deliver a more complicated message that connected treatments to research to donations, all the while delivering an emotional impact.

The answer to this challenge wasn’t to serve more ads but to tell stories about the frontline impact of the BHF’s work.

Stories about averting heartbreak and keeping loved ones together.

Stories that everyone could identify with.

Stories that would prompt people to act.

Our strategy was simple:

SHIFT BHF FROM BEING AN ADVERTISER TO BEING A STORYTELLER AND TELL THE STORIES OF THE DIFFERENCE THE BHF’S RESEARCH MAKES

We approached a storyteller that was the perfect fit: Channel 4’s award-winning documentary series: 24 Hours In A&E

The show was also a perfect fit with our target audience who were 65% more likely to watch the show, with 50% of all regular viewers either believing in the BHF’s cause or having been personally affected by heart disease.

The result was a bespoke 60min 24 Hours in A&E: Heart Special, broadcast in primetime on Channel 4 (the UK’s 2nd biggest commercial channel) in March 2020, telling the stories of three individuals who were in A&E with serious heart and circulatory conditions.

To promote the show’s broadcast, we negotiated branded promotional airtime on Channel 4 and supported this with paid social support featuring emotive video cutdowns targeted to the BHF’s key donor audiences.

In addition to the stories being told in the show itself, in each of the show’s three ad-breaks, we created specially-shot ads featuring the loved ones of patients whose story had been told in the preceding part of the show, alongside a call for donations.

The show itself concluded with footage of each of the individuals and their families, showing the impact of the treatments they had received and how vital the BHF’s work is.

Despite the show airing in Wk1 of the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown - when there was only one disease on people’s lips - the program shifted perceptions of the BHF and drove a considerable volume of donations:

?2m people tuned in to watch the BHF Heart Special, beating our anticipated target by 66%

-89% of episode viewers felt it was linked very clearly with the BHF

-96% of viewers would recommend the episode to others

?The BHF received 62% more text donations in one night than they typically receive from an entire month of TV fundraising activity – despite the call to action ads we ran asking for a higher amount than normal

?1 in 8 of these supporters then signed up for regular giving, a 78% higher conversion rate than BHF’s benchmark and a critical step in helping the BHF beat heartbreak forever