Can creative use of internal communications help save a life? This set of films proves it can.

In December 2014, HSBC employee Raj Bhuller was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia. His only chance of survival was a stem cell transplant, but because so few Asians were on the register, his chances of finding a matching donor were only 40%.

The creative idea was to tell Raj’s story through simple, emotionally powerful films and trust HSBC’s global community of 257,600 employees to respond by joining the donor database.

The results were immediate. An existing donor recruitment event in London was oversubscribed and staff who had never even met Raj responded spontaneously by organising 28 more donor events in 5 countries, in just 6 weeks.

The films were distributed globally on the HSBC NOW internal video distribution network, YouTube and twitter.

The first film tells a highly emotional story of a man and his extended family facing the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease. The fact that this is an HSBC colleague makes it even more emotionally charged. The film was intended as a call to action, especially to employees from the Asian community in the UK, to consider becoming a stem cell donor.

The second film is an update on progress, showing the scale of the response from the HSBC community. It makes the audience proud to see that they are part of a community who cares. The third film celebrates finding a match for Raj, showing the joy and relief of his family, and the final film documents his gradual recovery and return to work.

6,100 HSBC employees sign up as potential blood stem cell donors

133,000+ internal HSBC employee views across the 4-part series.

2,907,794 impressions on twitter

29 donor recruitment events in 5 countries (India, UK, US, Canada and Hong Kong), in 6 weeks

Separately from Raj’s case, 3 HSBC employees have been a donor match and have donated their stems cells and 4 HSBC employees have been told they are a ‘potential match’. They are awaiting calls from the charity involved with the donor recruitment.

“Raj’s story” was cited as the number one reason employees are proud to work at HSBC in a recent global survey of 24,000+ staff.