To engage people about the new Walking Dead series on FOX channel in Poland, we decided to do something good. When you die and eventually become a zombie you won’t need your organs. That’s why we encouraged young people to take part in our campaign called "Do something good before you become a zombie". How? By signing a zombie donor card. This card (also called a statement of intent) helps relevant services identify you as a potential donor after you die... and obviously before you turn into a zombie. To make it all possible, we redesigned standard donor cards into zombie donor cards. Thanks to that young people were able to sign them more willingly.

The idea was to combine the promotion of a well known TV series with a good cause and education about organ donation.

The PR elements of the campaign are really the key elements here. The budget was very small (20K euros) so to start the conversation in social and traditional media about the IDEA, we needed a big PR support. It came from 3 sources: FOX channel (PR partnership with Przemyslaw Saleta - olympic champion who donated one of his kidneys to his daughter), DONOR.PL (biggest NGO in Poland that promotes organ donations - they not only gave us a big PR but also knowledge support), and HASH.FM (bloggers hub through which we sent activation packs with zombie donor cards and TWD gadgets - they provided us with more than 1,000,000 users reach in social media only).

The goal of the campaign was to increase the viewership of The Walking Dead on FOX channel. The goal of IDEA was to distribute as many zombie donor cards as possible. Finally there were more than 5,000 signed zombie cards. To give you a bigger picture: in Poland 1,500 people wait MONTHLY for transplantation. The number of transplantations is 1,000... yearly. Distributing 5000 donor cards increases the possibility of finding a donor by 5 times.

- 5000 donor cards SIGNED.

- Viewership of TWD on FOX was 175% bigger than the average channel viewership (source: Nielsen Audience Measurement).

- Despite having a really small budget almost 4,000,000 Poles had contact with The Walking Dead in the time of our campaign (source: Nielsen Audience Measurement, target 16-49).

- Thousands uploaded pictures and made mentions on social and in traditional media.

We started a week before the TWD premiere with website, a TV commercial on FOX channel and support from their own social media channels. Instantly we got people talking about the idea of signing zombie donor cards. Three days before the premiere we organized an event in Central Station in Warsaw where everyone could take a selfie with real zombies, learn more about transplantology and get their own donor card.

We also partnered with specialists from Donor.pl - the biggest NGO organisation promoting organ donations in Poland. They helped us with creating a big buzz on social media. After the premiere we continued promoting the idea by cooperating with bloggers. Thanks to our efforts, TWD became a hot topic on social and traditional media. People started to upload their own pictures with zombie donor cards on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, which really helped to spread the idea further.

There were two key barriers in the brief: market situation and the budget. In October we witnessed many TV series premieres on different channels. As a result, people could see many TV series adverts throughout different media. To stand out from the clutter we needed to do something different: have a strong idea that would get people talking and activate the conversation. The other thing was a really small budget (20K euros). It forced us to create something physically small as a reason to talk (donor card) but big in its idea. That’s why we decided to combine a popcultural icon (TWD series) with a good cause (education about transplantology).

Target audience was mostly young people, who watched TWD series already. We knew that if we created something fresh, they would spread the word further. There second target audience was people who knew that TWD existed, but who never watched it ("It’s some dumb zombie series"). By creating a PR campaign promoting transplantology and TWD at once, we brought their attention as well.

Our strategy, that came from low budget (20k euros) and market situation (lot of TV series premieres in October) was to create a reason for consumers and media to talk.