Every week, around 300 people in the Netherlands suffer from cardiac arrest outside the hospital. But research shows that bystanders, and young people in particular, often don’t know how to respond. Young people, however, are the perfect first responders, because they’re out on the streets more than other age groups, and often are 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.

Turning Instagram Stories into a life-saving CPR training tool.

We noticed it’s become common behavior on Instagram to quickly flick through Instagram Stories, by tapping on the right side of your mobile phone, tap after tap after tap. So, with animated stories and custom music, we triggered youngsters to use their existing tapping behavior to keep a character alive. By doing so, they learn the basics of CPR.

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.

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.

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.