Lifeblood can’t pay blood donors or give them anything worth more than a few dollars for their literally life-saving act. How do you incentivise people to be stuck with needles if you can’t pay them?

I was lead creative on Lifeblood’s groundbreaking pilot program to test if giving donors Lifeblood-branded merchandise items would be enough to change donor behaviour.

To give it the best chance of success, our creative team developed merch that we knew donors would actually want. These high quality, useful products featured a mix of my tongue-in-cheek copy with the core message that they’re a blood donor for life. In all senses of the word.

The pilot was immediately successful in increasing the percentage of donors returning to donate and reducing the time between donations. Donors also took to social media to share photos of their gifts, becoming public advocates for donation.

Lifeblood Gifts became business-as-usual and has had multiple donor-anticipated ‘drops’ of new and limited-time merch since launch. Nearly 60% of active donors are opted-in to the program.