In a media landscape where there is a torrent of slick, big-budget, high-impact viral clips backed by promoted spend how could we tell the story of what it's really like to wait for an organ that was original and compelling enough to make national news?

Rather than make a short viral ad we decided to make the longest. Billed, for PR purposes, as ‘the world’s longest ad’ (the previous was for an American restaurant chain at 13 hours) we would capture 14 hours of unbroken footage of a patient at home waiting for a call with news of an organ donor. Ultimately it’s a call that never comes, a very long film without an end.

A story that can’t told in a statistic or soundbite, the film would give a voice to a patient and a family to talk candidly about how it feels to be on borrowed time.

Implementation

The Howells agreed to have the downstairs of their family home rigged with fixed cameras and microphones shooting continuously, ‘Big Brother style'. Prior to filming we conducted audio interviews with members of the family which could be overlaid onto selected sequences of the film to provide a narrative and ‘inner monologue’ to the final edit

Timeline

Nov 4: Filming

Nov 5 -18: Editing

Nov 13-20: Media relations

Nov 20 - Launch

Placement

National and regional broadcast and online interviews and video seeding

Full public screening at Vue Piccadilly, London

The Wait hosted online at NHS Organ website

Edited content seeded through @NHSOrganDonor

Influencer/celebrity seeding on Twitter to the hosted film

Scale

The campaign ran across the UK with a focus on a big burst launch on November 20, with content, interviews and features running for the following 7 days.

Tier 2

318 pieces of coverage featuring The Wait and/or the need for more organ donors to come forward to reduce wait times, with a combined reach of 1.78 billion

• 3 pieces of national TV

• 3 pieces of national print

• 27 pieces of national online

• 3 pieces of national radio

• 138 pieces of regional print and online news

• 93 pieces of regional radio

• 11 pieces of and marketing trade media

Influencers such as Richard Branson and comedian Russell Howard with a 10/10 rating on Twitter and a combined following of 16m drove links to the NHS Organs site using #timetosign

900k views of #TimetoSign video content over campaign period

Tier 3

The organ donor website saw 9,730 new digital sign ups in the week of launch alone.

In the following 10 weeks a further 80,000 adults registered to become donors.