How PriceWeber helped put a creative spin on organ donation

Organ donors provide much-needed hope for sick individuals who are seeking a new lease on life via a transplant. But in many instances, long wait lists and a lack of available resources can put a damper on both patients and medical professionals involved in the transplant process.

The answer: a special focus on pets. Kentucky-based advertising and communications firm PriceWeber, in collaboration with the Kentucky Organ Donor Registry Affiliates (KODA) and Donate Life KY Trust, launched the Save My Human campaign to showcase the bond that people share with their beloved furry friends and how organ donation can prolong it. The campaign’s success earned a 2024 Ragan PR Daily Nonprofit Communications Award for Best Marketing Campaign.

The roots of the campaign

The genesis of the Save My Human campaign came from meetings between PriceWeber, KODA and the Donate Life KY Trust. The two non-profit entities wanted to launch a new campaign that would stand out and resonate with the general public. Connor Hughes, senior account manager at PriceWeber, said that they wanted to help re-engage people who had heard previous messaging campaigns about organ donation but expand their reach to people who hadn’t considered organ donation before.

“That’s when we had a breakthrough —tapping into the deep bond between people and their pets,” Hughes said. “It may be a bit taboo to say, but we all know that sometimes people are even more passionate about animals than they are about other people, so why not use that to spark an emotional connection?”

From concept to reality 

Once PriceWeber landed on the idea of featuring people’s pets to form an emotional connection with those in need of organ donations, they worked to determine the campaign’s visuals. Hughes told Ragan that they pulled in every in-house creative resource possible to pull off the campaign, and even considered working with real pets and animal trainers for a filmed commercial.

“Ultimately, we landed on a mix of real-life and animated elements, which gave us flexibility across video, print and digital assets,” Hughes said. “To add a personal touch, we featured real people awaiting transplants with their pets to kick off our social media campaign.”

He shared that PriceWeber used talent from all parts of the agency, enlisting the skills of graphic designers to sharp copywriters to align with the message of the campaign to get things perfectly in sync. Once the animations were made, the writing was done, and the campaign was ready for launch, PriceWeber leaned on its team of master marketers to place the campaign across social and traditional media via an extensive PR push.

Hughes added that to give the campaign more depth and resonance, the team went beyond just creating a simple hashtag for social media, designed downloadable prints and made t-shirts and bandanas that people could order. This allowed Save My Human to grow beyond the online space and gain a foothold outside the confines of traditional social media while keeping a consistent identity.

“This gave the campaign a consistent visual identity while creating an opportunity to raise funds,” she said.

Measuring for success

The stakes of the campaign were higher than in many situations. In addition to the typical measures of a marketing campaign’s success like views and placements, Save My Human aimed for and succeeded in influencing an uptick in organ donation registrations.

“If even one more person registered as an organ donor, that could mean saving up to eight lives and changing even more through transplants,” she said. “But, of course, we aimed for much more than that.”

Image courtesy of PriceWeber

Save My Human saw a 7.2% increase in registrations year over year for the Kentucky Organ Donor Registry and a 42% increase in Kentucky registrations for the National Organ Donor Registry.

The other metrics weren’t too shabby, either. The out-of-home campaign reached over 8 million people, while TV ads reached 4.9 million people and cable ads found their way to an additional 2.3 million. Additionally, the paid social media campaign reached 650,000 people while doubling engagement figures from previous campaigns, and earned media pushes landed the campaign in 103 outlets reaching nearly 15 million people.

Hughes told Ragan that Save My Human marks one of her favorite career pursuits because of the tangible difference it’s made in saving lives.

“The enthusiasm from every single person involved made us confident from the start that it would be a success,” she said. “But more than that, knowing we played a small role in saving lives? That’s the most rewarding part of all.”

To learn more about Ragan Awards programs, click here.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.