Shalona Willie, a 28-year-old woman living with Sickle Cell Disease who has received several blood transfusions is at the heart of a new advertising campaign to highlight the life-saving power of blood donation.
She features in NHS Blood and Transplant’s new outdoor advertising campaign which enables members of the public to give a virtual blood donation and see the life-saving transformation of patients before their eyes.
Shalona from Hackney, London, is one of three people whose lives have been transformed by blood transfusions who is taking part in the campaign. She hopes to encourage people who have never given blood before to register to donate blood for the first time.
Shalona had her first blood transfusion in July 2009 when she was 38 weeks pregnant with her first child and hospitalised with a sickle cell crisis. She says: “I’m really delighted to be taking part in this campaign to encourage people to sign up as blood donors. The people that gave me blood when I had my daughter are my superheroes. I was extremely poorly and a blood transfusion was literally the last resort. Given that I have Sickle Cell Disease it’s very scary that under 1% of black people in England have given blood in the last year. To all those considering giving blood and haven’t one so yet, I would say do it! Become a superhero!”
The campaign, which was created by agency 23Red and won a digital outdoor advertising competition run by Ocean Outdoor, uses innovative augmented reality technology to enable members of the public give a virtual blood donation via an iphone.
The campaign uses an augmented reality app which connects to a large advertising screen featuring an empty blood bag and ill patient. Visual recognition is used to detect a sticker on the recipient’s skin which then overlays a plaster, needle and tube over their arm.
As the participant watches they see ‘blood’ flowing down the tube from their arm and up onto the screen in front of them. As the blood bag fills up, the virtual donor can watch as the sick patient gradually returns to health before their eyes. It is the first time an augmented reality app has been used in this way to trigger animation via one of Ocean Outdoor’s giant screens.
A make up artist worked closely with Shalona and the other two people involved, to recreate how they looked when they were sick and in need of a transfusion. Personal photographs and feedback were used to ensure that the images in the campaign are as accurate and true to life as they can be.
NHS Blood and Transplant needs to collect 1.6 million units of blood each year to meet the needs of patients across England and faces a constant challenge to recruit the right mix of donors across all the various blood groups. There is a particular need to attract more younger donors (from 17 years old) and people from black and South Asian communities.
