<img width="1" height="1" style="display:none;" src="//ib.adnxs.com/pixie?pi=da3765fe-b89e-4d68-a777-4ef35def16e2&amp;e=PageView&amp;script=0">

The Walking Dead BloodstoreWhen season four of the hit TV show The Walking Dead came to the Fox Channel in Portugal, the people responsible for the show’s PR used experiential marketing to come up with a fantastic way of raising awareness and making a big impression.

Before revealing any details, it’s probably worth briefly explaining what the show is about, in case you’ve never seen it. The Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror drama based on the comic book series of the same name. It’s about a sheriff who comes out of a coma to find a post-apocalyptic world dominated by flesh-eating zombies. There’s your context, there’s your setting…

The Walking Dead gang (including creative agency Torke+CC) teamed up with Portugal’s national blood bank institute IPST to create ‘The Walking Dead Blood Store’, where blood was accepted as currency. While this was clearly an effort to get people talking about the new season, the experiential marketing campaign added a nice touch – it also increased blood donations.

In terms of the concept of combining pop-up shops with blood donations, it was a World first. It was a well-thought out plan – anyone donating blood could use their donation to ‘buy’ ‘The Walking Dead’ merchandise (and the more blood you donated, the better the products).

Continuing the theme, donors were then encouraged to ‘contaminate’ their friends and family with the idea of doing the same. The IPST saw a 571% increase in blood donations compared to the previous year, and over two thirds of the donations were made by first-time donors.

The blood and gore initially gives a pretty gruesome impression of this PR stunt, but actually, the idea has kinder roots than most experiential marketing campaigns. It was extremely successful for many parties, so perhaps that’s the crucial lesson to take away?

Topics: Experiential Marketing, PR Stunts, The Walking Dead

Scott Bagguley

Written by Scott Bagguley

Digital Sales @ ExactDrive. Has pain in his left-foot from power dunking. Owns salt water fish. Happily married.

Gain Control.

Founded in 2011, ExactDrive is a data-driven digital media buying and planning agency. We’re always on the lookout for motivated ad agencies and businesses with a growth and improvement mindset. The more successful you are, the better your business will grow and ExactDrive is here to help.
 
ExactDrive works best when paired up with an ad agency or business that is looking to optimize and enhance its service offering and campaign performance. It's important to us not just how much you spend, but where your money goes - we love diversifying our efforts across various digital media channels to maximize return on ad spend.
 
Whether you want to raise awareness, incite action or open new channels, ExactDrive works behind the scene to deliver results so you can focus on operational imperatives. As a result, we become extensions to your daily ad operations and can be trusted with any digital media need because deep knowledge is always at hand.
 
To get experts on your side and gain control fill out the form.