The idea was to partner with an organization with an established position in the young BAME community. We aimed to use their voice to raise awareness of the shocking fact, that just 3% of blood donors in the UK are black or Asian.

The campaign set out to create content that our target demographic would actively seek out. This was done under the guise of first celebrating all the parts of life that black and Asian people are representing in, from politics to music and everywhere in between before landing the shocking fact that there was one place that the BAME community was not representing: blood centers up and down the country. This tied in with the MOBOS values and ensured the campaign was not perceived as simply negative or finger wagging.

The MOBOs provided grime artist Lady Leshurr, winner of best female act at the MOBOS 2016, who wrote and created a bespoke track for our campaign, Represent.

The film celebrated all the sectors of society that black and Asian people are now represented before delivering the shocking fact that in donor centers up and down the country these communities were not representing themselves.

With Lady Leshurr we co-created a specifically made song and music video. The video featured black and Asian influencers from all parts of UK society: sports to business, politics to science right through to music and fashion. Big names like Olympic Gold medalists Nicola Adams and Ade Adepitan, Model Mariah Idrissi and Labour MP Chukka Ummuna helped us reach out to an even further audience.

Campaign ran across:

TV, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, OOH (At events including at the ‘Houses of Parliament’, MOBO Awards, MOBO Pre Awards).

• We saw more BAME registrants in November than in the last 3 years.

• New black donor registrations at its highest for 3 years.

• Usually only 54% of black blood donor sessions are first time donors, during the MOBO campaign first time black donors made up 87% of all black donations.

• The campaign generated 17,000 new blood donors which translates into 51,000 lives saved or improved

• Over 290,000 combined views of the music video

• Over 1 million Youtube impressions

• Track downloaded over 12,000 times

• Click per view of £0.06 (Lowest for NHSBT campaign ever particularly among males where the normal rate is £0.49)