BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION | HARD, FAST & EFFECTIVE | 2013
The Ad That Brought 28 People Back to Life / British Heart Foundation "HARD, FAST & EFFECTIVE"
People who watched this ad ended up saving 28 lives. An ad whose success gets measured not by awareness or likability, but by "how many people came back from the dead" — that's not something you see every day.
The problem
In the UK, about 60,000 people go into cardiac arrest outside of hospitals every year, and only 7% survive to leave the hospital. If someone performs chest compressions, the survival rate becomes twice as high — but many people hesitated to do CPR because mouth-to-mouth resuscitation felt like "kissing a stranger."
The insight
Here's the thing: you don't actually need mouth-to-mouth. Just push hard and fast. Everything came down to whether this message — "Hands-only CPR" — could lodge itself in people's heads instantly. And as a stroke of almost too-perfect luck, the tempo of the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" happens to match the correct rhythm for chest compressions exactly.
The idea
Former footballer Vinnie Jones stands over a collapsed man and declares, "Forget the kiss of life. Just whack him in the chest hard and fast, to the beat of Stayin' Alive." He then keeps pounding away on the man's chest in time with the song. Shot with the moody look of a British gangster film, it's funny, a little unsettling, and once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
What happened
The ad was viewed more than 2.8 million times on YouTube and won several awards at Cannes Lions, including a gold Media Lion. And 28 people got in touch to say this ad was the reason they were saved.
Afterthought
A job where you can measure your success by how many lives you've saved — now that's something to envy. According to CD Vicki Maguire, the campaign's success felt like it could walk right up to you on the street and shake your hand. I hope someday I get to make an ad like this too.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2013
