HEMOJI
By VMLY&R - Sao Paulo
For Santa Casa De Misericórdia De São Paulo
Winner in category Health & Wellness
In subcategory Non-Profit-Digital
Project Description
Santa Casa is the largest philanthropic hospital in Latin America. However, it suffers from a chronic shortage of blood – very few Brazilians are regular voluntary blood donors. Hemoji has been changing this scenario. Now, to identify yourself as a donor, simply add an already-existing emoji, along with the plus or minus character, to your screen name on Twitter and Instagram. This way, you become an instantly reachable donor. So, every time Santa Casa searches, on the platforms’ search engines, for the blood type needed the most at that moment, it reaches the right number of right donors at the right time. Contacting each user directly, making it more appealing emotionally and anticipating potential doubts to make donations more assertive. At the same time, the initiative empowers people to show support for the cause in an easy and visually beautiful way, influencing their followers.
Agency Solution
“Hemoji” appropriates a very popular social behavior: the use of emojis on social platforms.
Brazil is the world’s number two in users on both Twitter and Instagram. Therefore, is very powerful for us to have a social-native strategy that runs 100% inside these platforms. Besides that, we took advantage of Twitter, a real-time platform, to solve an issue that always comes up with immediate needs – blood donation.
The Emoji alphabet has four images representing blood types: AB, A, B, and O.
We invited people to add one of these emojis, along with the plus or minus character, to their screen names on Twitter and Instagram. Therefore, they can share their blood type and identify themselves as blood donors.
By searching for an emoji and users’ region on the platforms, Santa Casa can find the right number of right donors at the right time – whenever a specific blood type is needed. Then, the hospital can ask for donations through direct messages.
During the first months of the project, we ran a series of social media posts on Santa Casa’s digital channels, introducing the activation and/or teaching followers on how to put the emojis on their profile’s screen names6. At the same time, posters and brochures have been available at the hospital until today
The agency’s PR team invited nationwide celebrities to add the emoji combination to their own screen names, along with talking about the initiative to their millions of followers through tweets and Stories.
For our surprise, several celebrities joined the campaign organically, without agency/client invitation, after seeing other celebrities becoming part of it. Some of them, months after the campaign’s launch.
In addition to the practical benefit (identify and reach donors), by being every day on everybody’s feed organically, the cause gets visibility, turning blood donation into a daily discussion topic.
Brazil is the world’s number two in users on both Twitter and Instagram. Therefore, is very powerful for us to have a social-native strategy that runs 100% inside these platforms. Besides that, we took advantage of Twitter, a real-time platform, to solve an issue that always comes up with immediate needs – blood donation.
The Emoji alphabet has four images representing blood types: AB, A, B, and O.
We invited people to add one of these emojis, along with the plus or minus character, to their screen names on Twitter and Instagram. Therefore, they can share their blood type and identify themselves as blood donors.
By searching for an emoji and users’ region on the platforms, Santa Casa can find the right number of right donors at the right time – whenever a specific blood type is needed. Then, the hospital can ask for donations through direct messages.
During the first months of the project, we ran a series of social media posts on Santa Casa’s digital channels, introducing the activation and/or teaching followers on how to put the emojis on their profile’s screen names6. At the same time, posters and brochures have been available at the hospital until today
The agency’s PR team invited nationwide celebrities to add the emoji combination to their own screen names, along with talking about the initiative to their millions of followers through tweets and Stories.
For our surprise, several celebrities joined the campaign organically, without agency/client invitation, after seeing other celebrities becoming part of it. Some of them, months after the campaign’s launch.
In addition to the practical benefit (identify and reach donors), by being every day on everybody’s feed organically, the cause gets visibility, turning blood donation into a daily discussion topic.