Save a Life campaign wins Gold

Ottawa, Ontario, November 2006 - Canadian Blood Services and Northern Lights Direct Response Television were winners at the Canadian Marketing Association’s 36th annual CMA Awards Gala on November 17th, 2006 in Toronto. The CMA Awards recognizes successful marketing campaigns for creativity, hard work and dedication. Canadian Blood Services and Northern Lights Direct Response Television took the gold for the 2006 donor recruitment campaign, Save a Life, in the Direct Response Television category.

The emotionally hard-hitting DRTV ads, featuring testimonials from real people whose lives have been saved or improved thanks to blood donors, ran nationally for eight weeks in February/March 2006. The campaign target was to bring in 2,000 new blood donors. Instead more than 3,000 new and lapsed donors made appointments to give blood.

“Television is a powerful medium to tell the story of real people--- in this case of blood recipients who might not have lived without the generosity of others,” says Steve Harding, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications for Canadian Blood Services. “And once we get that message out either by advertising, or our other donor recruitment strategies, we have to make it easy for potential donors to follow through on the call to action and dial 1-888 2 DONATE.”

Canadian Blood Services also received a CMA merit award for Operation Lifeblood, a pilot project to create the world’s first online prospective blood donor database, and held in London, Ontario in the fall of 2005. Based on the success of that campaign, Canadian Blood Services launched a province-wide Operation Lifeblood program in Alberta in September to recruit 7,500 new donors who will commit to donating blood once within the next 12 months. Northern Lights Direct Response Television also used the success of the “Save a Life” testimonials from real people to develop television spots for Operation Lifeblood.

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About Canadian Blood Services
Canadian Blood Services is a national, not-for-profit charitable organization that manages the blood supply in all provinces and territories outside of Quebec and oversees the country's Unrelated Bone Marrow Donor Registry. A dedicated team of about 4,500 staff and 17,000 volunteers enable us to operate 41 permanent collection sites and more than 19,000 donor clinics annually. Canadian Blood Services is a non-governmental organization, however the Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Health provide operational funding, and the federal government, through Health Canada, is responsible for regulating the blood system.

For more information contact:
Anne Trueman,
Manager Media Relations,
Canadian Blood Services
(Work) 613 739 2538
(Cell) 613 295 5622