Canadian Blood Services is looking to diversify its donor base and broaden its stem cell registry with a recruitment campaign touring events around the Greater Toronto Area.

The “Summer of Life” activation will show up at key festivals to make it convenient for people to become blood and stem cell donors.

The organization activated at the Pan American Food and Music Festival at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square over the weekend, and from here will go to events like Toronto’s Taste of The Danforth and the TD Markham Jazz Festival in August.

Raanne Adamkewicz, Canadian Blood Services’ marketing manager, tells strategy that it is a unique organization, in that people can literally save a life by becoming a donor, which is a message that is most effective when it is personalized.

“We know that historically, in-person recruitment works best,” she says. “We are literally asking an individual to give a piece of themselves to a complete stranger and so that […] is very different from selling a product or a service.”

Prior to the pandemic, 70% of registrants to the stem cell registry came from in-person recruitment, and Adamkewicz says it has been difficult to find the same success digitally during COVID-19 restrictions.

In February, Canadian Blood Services did a barber shop pop up that offered free hair cuts at Square One in Mississauga to attract key young male donors. Learnings from that informed the summer activation. “We are trying to be where people are: festivals and fun activities,” Adamkewicz notes.

Individuals can book a blood or plasma donation appointment or sign up to join the stem cell registry online at any time. To make it even more convenient for attendees, Canadian Blood Services will offer appointment bookings and on-site swabbing at the following festivals this summer.

Kimberly Shaughnessy, Canadian Blood Services’ associate director of marketing, says “Summer of Life” is about being bold, colourful and irreverent, with the organization giving out 90s throwback eyewear at events that have QR codes to drive to registration pages.

The “Summer of Life” activation, she says, is “probably the largest experiential boots on the ground campaign that we’ve ever run,” with the focus on the GTA, to diversify the stem cell registry and to attract a younger demo.

“The Ask” is a hero video deployed through paid media, asking people who’ve been affected by an urgent need for blood, plasma or stem cells whether they will donate this summer. “Despite our intentions…50% of Canadians tell us they’ve never donated blood or plasma,” Shaughnessy admits.

According to Canadian Blood Services, it has a core group of donors who donate multiple times but doesn’t want to become overly reliant on them, especially with the limited shelf life of blood products and periods of urgent need.

Supporting the campaign is influencer and Corus radio personality Kolter Bouchard, who has lived experience as a survivor of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Agency support is from Boulevard of Dreams for PR, Produktiv for creative and digital and Mad Bash Group on the event activation.