The Canadian Blood Services
THE CASE:
Michel Cloutier Marketing Case Competition
The rules:
Deadline: Three months
The Format: 20 minutes + 10 minutes of questions
My Placement:
1st Place (French Division)
Situation
As Baby boomers are getting older, The Canadian Blood Services (CBS) are facing a shortage of donors. To attract future donors, CBS needs to find a way to attract new donors and beat out the rest of the competition for attention.
The Ask
Because many people do not know CBS offers more than just blood, the Canadian Blood services wants to rebrand to
a) Attract millennial donors
b) Focus on more than just their blood donation service, but the other life services CBS offers (plasma transfusions etc.).
BUDGET: $1M
The Target
Millennials ages 18-26, middle class, enjoys browsing social media and social gatherings.
The STRATEGY
"Life’s a party, let’s celebrate it together"
People like to celebrate special events by throwing parties, millenials in particular don’t even need an excuse to throw a party.
We want to tell millenials that the real party isn’t at the bar, but life itself and the only way for everyone to celebrate life, is to donate their life products to others who need it.
Tactic #1: a TV Commercial
The commercial storyline is based on contrasting the lives of two teenage girls, Émilie (left column) and Anna (right column).
Émilie and Anna are both the same age, but they lead completely different daily routines: Émilie wakes up and has to prepare for surgery, but Anna wakes up and gets ready to see friends.
The plot twist at the end is when we discover that Anna was getting ready to see friends at the hospital to meet Émilie (they all wear red bandages indicating they’ve donated blood) because we celebrate life together
Tactic #2: Improve Email
To have more efficient emails, we categorized the donors: First-time donors, repeat donors, one-time donors.
First-time donors will be sent informative content a week before their appointment.
Repeat donors will be sent exclusive content like an invitation to a new program exclusively for repeat donors
One-time donors will be sent thank-you email after their appointment and an anniversary email one year after they’ve donated blood.
We also wanted to change the appearance of the emails to resonate more with millenials:
Before
After
OTHER EMAIL SUGGESTIONS:
Send a notification email one month, two weeks, and two days before an appointment
Automatically integrate the appointment into Google Calendar/Apple Calendar
In all emails for millenials, use a unique brand tone
Tactic #3: Use Social Media
Social Media Community Hashtag
#Célébronslavie or #letscelebratelife
We’ll give donors a hashtag that they can use to post their selfies on social media.
We’ll then repost all the photos onto the official Instagram page to create an online community.
Tactic #4: Have University Kiosks
FIND YOUR TYPE
We also suggest hosting regular university kiosks and help students identify their blood type.
This is also a good time to rebrand the CBS kiosk experience, by giving participants themed cards that describe their blood type based on Canadian wildlife animals
FREE SWAG BAG
After successfully participating in the blood test kiosk, we’ll give students a “swag bag” that contains stickers, water bottle, an agenda, keychain etc.
Millennials will really appreciate free stuff, especially free stuff that adds value to their lives.
The Financials
We estimated that the entire cost of the rebranding will cost around $646 737
TV Commercial : $610 000
Production: $10 000
Youtube Ads (Three months): $300 000
Millennial Viewers: 3M
Facebook Ads (Three months): $300 000
Millennial Viewers: 810 000
Email Redesign: $3000
The $3000 is the contract to hire a graphic designer.
Social Media Advertising:
$18 250
$50/daily spending x 365 days
Millennial Viewers: 2.92M
Goodie Bag: $15 487
** We estimate 540 monthly visitors for a whole year **
$2.39/bag
Tote Bag: $.75/unit
Water Bottle: $.99/unit
Key holder: $.25/unit
Agenda: $.30/unit
Stickers: $.10/pack
What I’ve learned
Follow Exact Orders
The winning team rebranding solution embodied CBS’ mandate the best. They made sure to include all of CBS’s life services (plasma, platelets etc.) while we forgot about the other life products and focused our campaign on getting people to donate blood only. We also did not use the entire budget, which we should have.
Be More Uniform
Our strategy lacked uniformity, our ideas were a little all over the place (i.e. the Kiosk theme was not in line with our Celebrate Life theme). Next time I pay meticulous attention to see if every piece flows together.
Props Go a Long Way
While we should’ve used more mockups to make the idea more real, we brought in real props to demonstrate our #4 tactic: University Kiosks. Using the props gave the judges a much more concrete idea of what to expect and provided good imagery.