The Scottish Government

The Scottish Government wanted to get the public to sign up to the Organ Donor register. The Scottish Government developed a strategy in ‘Live Media’ which leveraged the emotional immediacy of news combined with the accountability of direct response over a period of 3 years. Although 91% of people claim to be in favour of Organ Donation, only a fraction of them ever join the register. The strategy saw direct response media placements linked with editorial coverage. The stark choice to ‘Kill Jill or Save Dave’ was placed alongside emotive features highlighting the stories of donors, their families and the recipients. The combination proved a powerful catalyst to action. By employing direct response (DR) tracking techniques, they were able to measure, optimise and evolve the campaign. Across three years the strategy was executed across press, field marketing, TV and online platforms. And each and every time we improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the campaign. In the first year, the ‘live media’ strategy was implemented through mono press ads bought on a short term basis specifically to run alongside emotive editorial features. In the second year there was bespoke editorial content and radio content. In the third year, a series of short format case study programmes were embedded in a topical news show on STV; immediately followed by a DR ad. In three years, 235,321 Scots joined the register.