Leo Burnett’s 'Can creativity make you bleed?' campaign focuses on specific human emotion across different channels, aimed at encouraging people to donate blood.
The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) challenged Leo Burnett, along with seven other shortlisted Australian creative agencies, to showcase the power of creativity and its potential to accelerate positive social, cultural, economic or cultural change.
The agencies were tasked with using the same five channels to communicate their idea – social media, a billboard, street furniture, a street poster and a digital screen.
Leo Burnett, a supporter of Lifeblood, chose to harness five different installations that evoke an emotional response, with the hope that it encourages them to give life by donating blood.
The different installations are live at the National Gallery of Victoria and pose the idea of joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust in visitors, with installations starting with the phrase: "Creativity has the potential to make people feel."
Andy Fergusson, executive creative director at Leo Burnett, describes the brief as an opportunity to celebrate creativity.
He told AdNews: “It was an open brief in many ways. NGV came to us with the idea of showcasing creative potential and it was really about celebrating that in Australia.
“This inspired us to not only highlight the joy of creativity, but also gave us the goal to prove that the very notion of creativity can truly change people's minds and impact them and use various emotions in different ways. This was our starting point.
“Leo Burnett once said that ‘creativity has the power to transform human behaviour’. So we saw this brief as an opportunity to prove the potential of creativity, by actually motivating people to do something tangible and positive.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_W2qCGs5e0
Fergusson opened up about what drives the creatives and all members of staff at Leo Burnett, crediting their work with Lifeblood and their inherent desire to inspire action from a reaction.
“What drives us at Leo Burnett is inspiring people to get up and take action. We didn't just want to do a campaign that people would listen to, it required a reaction to the action.
“We work with Lifeblood, so we are very well versed in the need for blood donations and it’s one of those problems that is felt around the world. There is always a need for blood, and a lack of donors.
“We wanted to create a campaign with all of the tools at our disposal that would actually make people want to give blood, because for many, it can be a scary thing.”
The executive creative director says that the idea to incorporate multiple emotions into the work was inspired by American psychologist, Paul Ekman, who used five to six emotions to stimulate an authentic response.
“Our idea to introduce 5 different emotions stemmed from Paul Ekman, a psychologist who coined these five to six different emotions to stimulate action.
“Those emotions are happiness, sadness, anger, fear and disgust and they are the core emotional drivers that we all have as humans.
“From there we thought about creating from the media strategies at our disposal which would portray a different ad using all of these emotions to try and get people to donate blood and use the exhibition to find out which ones people had more of a reaction to.”
Fergusson says that the attraction towards this work is due to the fact that it strays away from traditional campaign strategies; the incorporation of the five installations evokes a personal response to each individual audience member.
Fergusson: “The fun thing about this work is that it is an art exhibition instead of a traditional campaign.
He said agencies don’t often perpetuate certain emotions - anger and disgust - in typical campaigns.
“Harnessing the multiple installations, especially creativity having the potential to make people feel anger, has the potential to work really well because we can present the public with infuriating facts.
“The fact of the matter is only 73% of Australians give blood; there are more people who are tax evaders and ‘flat earthers’ than there are people willing to donate. These facts really should make your blood boil.
“There is a really nice inspiration there for some righteous indignation to give blood, and actually make people cross that line.
“The way we approached creativity making people feel disgust was through the team who actually found a terrifying sceric of research that found a group of blood drinkers in Australia who drink blood for their supposed health benefits. It is partly disgusting, but it is also kind of a funny approach as well.
“We focused on this couple who are blood drinkers who speak about the health benefits of drinking blood. This calls to mind the element of shock and curiosity in audience members and can either be humorous, inspiring or downright revolting.”
Fergusson: "Hopefully, we’ll not only inspire people to give blood, but we will also gain valuable data on how we can best motivate them. It’s like an incredibly elaborate focus group.”
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