Hold the front page!
Organ donation made the headlines in March as part of a unique campaign in The Sun newspaper.
Following an approach from The Sun earlier this year, UK Transplant agreed to print a special Sun-branded leaflet and donor card that were inserted in over 4 million copies of the Saturday 29th March edition, reaching an estimated 7.6 million Sun readers.
In a great gesture of support, The Sun dedicated the front page of the paper to the campaign as well as featuring several stories about people whose lives have been transformed by transplants. Overall, the space dedicated to the campaign by the Sun represented an advertising value of over £940,000.
"It seems fairly obvious to say, but we simply couldn't buy this kind of media coverage," says Angie Burton, UK Transplant's Marketing and Campaigns Manager. "This is the first time UK Transplant has run a national newspaper campaign on this scale and The Sun gave us an unprecedented opportunity to promote organ donation to millions of readers."
Over 33,300 Sun readers responded to the campaign and applied to join the NHS Organ Donor Register (ODR) via the leaflet insert, Organ Donor Line and UK Transplant website.
The campaign was particularly useful for raising awareness amongst groups within the population who are poorly represented on the ODR. Sign-ups from these groups increased by around 10% in response to the campaign.
"This was an excellent opportunity to promote organ donation to a huge number of people, particularly those who don't tend to join the ODR," says Angie Burton. "We are very grateful to The Sun for their enthusiasm and support."