Give Blood and the power of a well-executed, strategic PR campaign

The power of a great PR campaign… And how law firms can use these lessons to achieve growth.

Today I’m writing about blood. Don’t worry, you’re not entering a romantasy novel (although all power to you if you enjoy the vampire trope, I am not here to judge lol. Everybody else – as you were).

No, this blog is taking a look into some of the more tactical considerations and tools at the PR’s disposal, and today the focus is upon media relations. As ever, my advice is aimed at law firms.

If you read the first blog in this series about PR tactics, you already know how important crisis comms are when it comes to reputation management. If not, you can read that post here.

I’ll also be writing about other tactics available to PR and marketing specialists over the next few weeks. If you run a law firm and there’s anything you’d like to see discussed – do get in touch and let me know.

But back to blood.

Unless you live under a stone, you’ll have seen that the NHS is desperately short of blood. In the UK blood is donated by volunteers and is called upon for all manner of medical procedures, in emergencies and, I imagine, to support ongoing treatment for a range of medical conditions.

By what do blood shortages, the NHS and law firms have in common, I hear you ask? (it must be my vampire hearing– SORRY not sorry lol).

Blood services are managed by an organisation called NHS Blood and Transplant and they have a PR team. It’s clear that at some point recently, blood bank levels were dropping to a lower level than anybody was comfortable with, and the PR team was called in to help. I had initially assumed this was a crisis brief, but having dug deeper, I suspect things have been planned with a slightly longer timescale in mind.

Whatever has happened behind closed doors, the planning and delivery of this campaign is a masterclass in effective, strategic and measurable PR.

Now, it’s worthwhile noting that I don’t work for this organisation, so I’m having to take a bit of a stab (lol) with regards to their terms of reference and goals etc.

However, it is clear that their immediate goal was to increase blood donations and looking at the press coverage – the aim is for 1 million people to donate blood.

Incidentally it happens to land around (but definitely not randomly), the 9^th – 15^th June, which is National Blood Week. I suspect this awareness week was also created by NHS Blood and Transport’s PR team as a great vehicle and news hook for building awareness and engagement over a number of years.

Turning to the strategic approach for this particular campaign, we can see that:

There was a clear Goal – achieve 1 million donations.
Strategy – this was probably something along the lines of ‘utilise an existing awareness event (National Blood Week) and effective media relations in order to reach the goal of 1 million donations / 1 million people donating blood within x period’.

Another point to note is the brand that NHS Blood and Transport use for their B2C audiences. You probably haven’t heard of NHS Blood and Transport (me neither), but you definitely know ‘Give Blood’. Clever eh?

Tactics
1. NHS Blood and Transport are active on social media – check them out on Instagram: givebloodNHS
2. Media relations – this campaign has achieved wall-to-wall media coverage across broadcast, broadsheet, tabloid and online channels.
3. Content – the Give Blood website contains not only content about the campaign but provides clarity around the particular types of blood sought and gives a live feed of the centres with donation appointments available today.
With regards to target audiences my view is that the obvious primary target audience is people in the UK who are eligible to give blood. However, looking again at the outputs, I suspect that the following were also identified as key audiences: People in the UK who are eligible to give blood and are type O negative, B negative and A negative – as these types of blood are currently critically low.
The key messages are probably essentially:
1. Make an appointment today to give blood
2. Register today to give blood in the future
Measurement should also always be a component of every campaign, and in this case either 1 million people will give blood, or they won’t. Either way, the campaign is measurable.

The above is the CIPR-approved strategic approach to effective PR, and you can see how easily this campaign fits the model. At its heart, this is an excellent campaign that ticks all of the boxes for a really effective approach, that delivers against the goals and nails the brief.

The good news for law firms, is that strategic PR can be used very effectively to support your firm’s growth strategy. Whilst you’re less likely to achieve the levels of coverage this campaign has generated, it’s perfectly possible to generate opportunities to be seen by your target audiences in your key media. Often, all it takes is a little planning.

If you are interested in leveraging your reputation in order to support your law firm’s growth – you should definitely register for our latest guide. The Law Firm Leaders’ Reputation Playbook has been created to give managing partners and owners of law firms a toolkit to start to understand, develop and utilise their reputations in order to achieve growth.

Download your copy here.

Victoria Moffatt is the founder and managing director of LexRex.

A non-practising solicitor she has been supporting law firms with their PR for over a decade. Get in touch with Victoria to discuss your law firm’s PR needs.

Connect with Victoria on LinkedIn.

Give Blood and the power of a well-executed, strategic PR campaign

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