London Bus Wrap Campaign Drives Vital Blood Donations This Winter

Over the next crucial six weeks in the run up to the busy festive period, there are over 60,000 appointments still to be filled in donor centres across England, with over 27,000 (43%) of these appointments in London.

This campaign appeals directly to Londoners; aiming to encourage existing donors to book an appointment, and inspire those who haven’t donated before, particularly young and Black heritage audiences, to sign up and book in for their first donation.

London is a key target area for NHS Blood and Transplant, due to a high number of potential donors, especially those of Black heritage, urgently needed to help treat a growing number of patients with sickle cell reliant on regular blood transfusions to stay alive.

Planned and bought by Posterscope and OmniGOV, the campaign features three fully wrapped double-decker buses and 185 bus Supersides, delivering eye-catching creative across high-footfall London routes.

Creative executions by Liveposter and NHS Blood and Transplant’s in-house creative services team, focus on the lifesaving impact of blood donation, with contextual messaging such as 'Save up to three lives in 1 hour', 'Every 90 seconds, London hospitals need a unit of blood' and 'London, it’s in your blood to save lives.'

The campaign goes live this week, with the bus wraps running for four weeks and Supersides for two weeks throughout London.

The campaign leverages high-impact outdoor formats to cut through London’s busy advertising landscape and is part of a wider multi-channel media strategy, which includes video-on-demand, social, radio, and digital audio.

Helen Duggan, assistant director of marketing and creative services at NHS Blood and Transplant, says, “Blood is needed every single day to help patients in London and across the country. At the moment, we urgently need more donors who have O negative blood, which is used in emergency situations, and more donors of Black heritage to treat people with Sickle Cell.

This campaign delivers an urgent, unmissable message to the streets of London, encouraging our generous community to book an appointment to give blood. Whether you’ve given blood before or are booking for the first time, we want to hear from you. In just one hour you can save and improve three lives this winter.”

The campaign comes at a time when NHS Blood and Transplant are particularly appealing for more donors with O negative, B negative and RO blood to come forward and help boost stocks.

O negative is known as the ‘universal’ blood type, which can be used for all patients in emergencies, and B negative is particularly rare, found in just 2% of the population.

To book an appointment to donate this winter, visit here or download the NHS Give Blood app.