The British Heart Foundation (BHF) had no intention of advertising during Euro 2020.

Then, during Denmark’s opening match vs Finland, the world witnessed the shocking collapse of Christian Eriksen – and the work of those who performed life-saving CPR on the pitch.

If a 29-year-old international footballer can suffer cardiac arrest on a global stage, then it can happen to anyone, at any time.

But most people don’t have highly trained medical support teams immediately on hand, meaning less than 1-in-10 people in the UK survive a cardiac arrest.

To drive more Brits to the BHF’s ‘How to Save a Life’ website, we created a high-impact – FINANCIALLY FEASIBLE - media opportunity in Euro 2020 that put the BHF’s life-saving message right in the middle of the conversation.

All for less than £40,000.

Specially created - in just 72 hours - to run before the kick-off of Denmark’s next game, we created “The ad we never expected to make” - a powerful contextual moment of TV for the British Heart Foundation to deliver a vital “help save lives, by learning CPR” message.

In just 72hrs…

We negotiated a 40 sec spot before live coverage of Denmark v Belgium, scheduled immediately after the section of the pre-match punditry where it was most likely ITV’s pundits would be talking about Eriksen’s incident.

A completely new ad was created that used the context of Eriksen’s collapse (but didn’t refer directly to it) and football turned actor Vinnie Jones was recruited to deliver the voiceover (Jones starred in the BHF’s most famous CPR campaign in 2013).

On Thursday June 16th “the Ad we never expected to make” was broadcast immediately after a 7-minute studio discussion led by BHF ambassador Graeme Souness, who discussed his own coronary heart disease experiences in context of Eriksen’s collapse.

Its impact was immediate, with the ‘help save lives by learning CPR’ message being amplified across social media – including by British football legends like David Seaman and Glenn Hoddle.

• The ad was seen live by 1.6m viewers

• 80 pieces of news and TV coverage featured the ad, reaching a further 20% of the UK population

• Visits to the BHF’s ‘How to save a life’ website increased by 246% (especially impressive as BHF web visits had already increased massively around Eriksen’s collapse 5 days earlier)

• In the week after the ad ran, BHF defibrillator and CPR kit sales increased +300%...

• …and though the ad didn’t prompt for donations, donations increased by 17.4%

But most importantly – visits to the BHF’s ‘How to save a life’ content post transmission created 58,000mnew potential lifesavers in the UK – at a media cost of just £0:69 each.

And as we all know, it only takes one of them to make a difference when the unexpected happens.