American Red Cross:
BLOOD DONATION

Every two seconds someone needs blood to survive a range of life-threatening situations including complicated childbirths, accidents, cancer recovery, and emergency surgeries. Unfortunately, most people don’t know this, so it’s no surprise that only 3% of Americans donate blood. To make matters worse, the American Red Cross recently announced that it is experiencing the lowest number of blood donations in the last 20 years.

To urge people to donate blood, we created two PSA films; “What’s Your Type?” and “Growing Up”.

With “What’s Your Type?” we wanted to create something relatable, so we started with a conversation around types. If you ask someone what their type is, they’ll likely have an answer, but very rarely is that answer about their blood type. To inspire people to donate blood, we reframed the “type” conversation to be about saving lives and gave it a unique misdirect to remind viewers that anyone could urgently need blood at any time.

“Growing Up” targets the Hispanic market (who have a higher rate of birth complications) and tells the story of a mother and her son, intertwining two stories that take place on two different days. One is the son’s birth and the other is the day of his kindergarten graduation. The PSA uses unique editing and direction to weave in and out of both stories taking the viewer on an emotional journey. The film ends leaving the viewer guessing if the storyline of the graduation happened at all. But what is painfully clear is that the child’s life cannot be saved without blood donations.