HDFC Bank’s 2018 Blood Donation drive was a runaway success with 300,000 donors

Supported by an award-winning campaign #StopMithani.

And we wanted 2019 to be even bigger.

The goal was to get 300,000 donors - more than the turnout in the 2018 edition

But in a country where low donor turnouts are the norm, this was going to be a tall ask.

Donor turnouts are usually low in India, which meant we needed to innovate to reach our target

Most blood donation drives try to encourage people to do some social good.

Unfortunately, Indians don’t really care about social good as they live stressful lives and most of them are too busy fighting their own battles to actively do something for social good.

So we needed to give more than 300,000 people a strong, personal reason to step out and donate blood.

We chose to focus on the tangible, physical benefits of blood donation and not just the emotional ones.

Our ambitious target meant we needed a stronger push than just the emotional benefits of having donated for intangible social good.

And we took this messaging to those who would care about their health the most — India’s fitness fanatics.

India’s growing tribe of fitness fanatics are urban metro dwelling youth who religiously follow diet fads, workout routines

Introducing #BYOB — Blood for your own body

We spoke directly to fitness fanatics in India and introduced the health benefits of donating blood by sharply targeting fitness fanatics with short videos filmed on their training grounds — gyms, swimming pools, and yoga centers.

Everyone agrees blood donation is good for society at large, but it does not translate into a personal motivation big enough to trigger action

Our insight: A personal goal is a better motivator than a social cause

We needed to translate the cause into a tangible personal goal for people

While the norm is to explore the emotional do-gooder benefits of blood donation, we chose to focus on its physical benefits instead.

By choosing to target physical benefits, we made the cause more personal and tangible.

Donating blood is proven to improve cardiovascular, liver, and even mental health. Studies also link it with a lowered risk of cancer

So we chose to take these benefits to India’s growing tribe of fitness fanatics — the urban youth of India who is leading the adoption of diet fads and fitness routines

Introducing #BYOB — Blood for Your Own Body

To reach out to the 90Mn+ health-conscious individuals in the country we,

Firstly, communicated this lesser-known fact about blood donation by creating a new health fad and then promoted it through a video across all social media platforms.

Secondly, to push this idea further we took over all the places where health freaks are found like gyms, fitness clubs, swimming pools, and yoga centers on our annual blood donation day and converted them into blood donation camps.

This activity took place for a whole day on 6th December 2019 throughout the country, across 4900+ camps, primarily in the metropolitan cities where there is an abundance of health freaks.

This activity took the country by surprise and ended up being really successful for us.

The campaign became a part of fitness conversations and trended at #1 on Twitter India

This resulted in us exceeding our target by 50% over last year!

450,000 donors showed up at the drive to donate blood as a result of #BYOB

The blood that was donated through this campaign was enough to save the lives of 14,50,000 Indians!

Most importantly it turned blood donation into a habit amongst the Indian youth.