Most of us will witness a cardiac arrest in our lifetime. But would you feel ready to perform CPR if the worst happened?

In the UK, if you suffer a cardiac arrest outside of hospital, your chances of survival are only 1-in-10. But if you receive swift CPR, your survival chances increase dramatically.

One of the British Heart Foundation’s biggest challenges is that not enough people feel confident enough to perform it.

A recent survey carried out for the British Heart Foundation by Censuswide suggested that as many as 23 million UK adults are yet to learn CPR.

It also found that Gen Z (age 16-26) is the generation best trained in CPR, with 67% having learnt.

With a sizable generational group who were already more confident in performing CPR than older generations, our brief was to engage Gen Z further on the lifesaving skill of CPR.

To raise awareness of the British Heart Foundation’s 15-minute RevivR CPR training, we put one of Gen Z’s favourite past-times into cardiac arrest.

We partnered with 14 high-profile gamers across the UK (with a combined following of 11m), to have their Twitch streams ‘flatlined’ to mimic the sudden and unexpected impact of a cardiac arrest.

At exactly the same time, each of the streamers’ broadcasts would be abruptly interrupted by a flatlining heart monitor, followed by UK cardiac arrest statistics and information on how watching viewers could learn lifesaving CPR with the British Heart Foundation’s free, online RevivR tool.

In the UK, Gen Z’ers spend more time gaming than they do on TikTok and spend TWICE as much time gaming than hanging out with friends in real life.

From a targeting perspective, gaming made total sense. But we’ve all seen brands venture into gaming and get it totally wrong.

Rather than starting with the existing opportunities gaming platforms offered us, we started with how we’d bring the problem to life.

Our strategy was to arrive in the gaming space in the same way cardiac arrest arrives in people’s lives.

Unexpectedly and without warning.

By creating a shocking impact, we could grab the disproportionate attention of our Gen Z target audience who weren’t expecting us to be part of their gaming experience.

To do that, we needed a live experience.

So, we looked to the new ‘gods’ of gaming for help. Twitch streamers.

Following six weeks of planning and negotiation, at 5:00pm on Friday 16th February, all 14 of our streamers’ feeds were simultaneously flatlined.

The flatlining was supported by a synchronized Twitch UK Homepage takeover which featured live feeds of what’s going on across all of the ‘flatlined’ streamers’ channels.

It made an immediate impact, with viewers sharing shock, concern, and confusion in the streamers’ chats, before each streamer then re-appeared to explain what had just happened and why they’d got involved with the BHF’s CPR campaign.

Some streamers even went on to do live CPR training demos as content on their streams.

Beyond the initial activation, the BHF also became sponsors of each streamer’s ‘Be Right Back’ screen, when streamers are taking a break from broadcasting. These all included a QR link to the BHF’s RevivR training so watching audiences could teach themselves CPR while they waited on the broadcast recommencing.

By mimicking cardiac arrest in a live gaming environment, we gained disproportionate attention.

Lumen Research showed:

-94% prompted BHF brand recall (vs. 40% benchmark)

-Attention scores were DOUBLE that of YouTube 30” ads and x7.4 times than expected from in-game ads.

-84% of respondents also said they were very likely to learn CPR through RevivR after seeing the campaign.

The overall campaign reached 714,620 new potential lifesavers.

But it only takes ONE to save a life.

Weeks after the initial activation, Preach – one of our 14 streamers - received this message from a follower during a live stream.

“Just wanted to say, watching your CPR segment during the stream the other day just saved the life of my 2-year-old niece. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Preach”.

A campaign that had set out to raise awareness of lifesaving CPR had directly saved a life.