Emily Needs You: Stem Cell Donor Appeal
Emily found a match in November 2022 and successfully had her transplant in December of that year
“May I thank you all at The Ark Media for your wonderful support regarding Emily. Your advertising campaign has been a wonderful gesture and we cannot thank you enough. We are totally overwhelmed. The amount of people who have contacted us saying they have seen the advertisements has been a joy to behold.”
Team Emily
Results
Over 2 million
impressions in Yorkshire across the 2 week campaign
Award winning
The Ark Media won the Bronze Community Social Impact Award at the prestigious industry Outdoor Media Awards
Over 80,000
Sign-ups to the Anthony Nolan Register
The digital screen at Junction 3 of the M621 delivered 6,400,800, impressions over a 6 week period
What happens when you bring the force of the media and community together to help save lives?
In October 2022, a local girl, Emily, had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia at the age of 21. Her family was desperately looking for a match for a stem cell transplant. People between 16-30 needed to take a mouth swab and join the Anthony Nolan Stem Cell Register to see if they were a match.
Team Emily, made up of Emily’s family were already campaigning on social media to get as many 16–30-year-olds signed up. However, once The Ark Media became aware of the campaign we looked to secure free advertising to spread the message of such a good cause.
Objectives
The campaign’s primary objectives were to
-Find a stem cell match for Emily from the 16-30 age group
-Increase awareness of those who need stem cell transplants
-Encourage 16-30 year olds to do a mouth swab and join the Anthony Nolan Stem Cell Register
-Highlight the vital work of the Anthony Nolan Trust and the urgency with which Emily needed a stem cell transplant
Strategy and Execution
Focusing on engaging 16-30 year olds in their environment, the Ark Media ran an integrated digital Out-of-Home and social media campaign urging people to sign up to the register. Utilising contacts at Leeds United and First Direct Arena, we targeted this age range at the Leeds v Arsenal match on 16 October 2022 and the Kendrick Lamar concert at the arena.
The strategy included
-Out -of-Home (OOH) advertising across train stations to direct people to Team Emily’s ‘swabbing station’ to have mouth swabs
-Digital billboard advertising across Huddersfield, Leeds, Bradford and Liverpool as well as raising awareness at Leeds United's ground and First Direct Arena
-A combined paid for and organic social media campaign
Impacting the Community
Reaching the target demographic with such a vital message at places you know they frequent was key to the success of this campaign. Raising awareness using the human element and how one small action, such as a mouth swab, and signing up to the Stem Cell Register, can and did have such a powerful ripple effect.
The Ark Media felt privileged to be able to bring Emily’s story to life through digital media, using powerful artwork and a social media campaign to engage and motivate people to take action.
We did what we could to support Team Emily, also hopefully saving lots of other people by increasing donors.
Team Emily said, “All I can say is WOW! This is absolutely amazing! This should make such a difference to the awareness and sign-up rates. We would have never been able to contact so many people. And in that target age group so this is just the best news”.
The clear call to action resulted in 80,000 signs up for the Anthony Nolan Stem Cell Register
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