Recruiting new people to donate blood is always difficult and the SANBS relies heavily on existing donors to sustain supplies of emergency blood. But donors sometimes exceed their 56-day due date, which often leads to a strain on supplies. 

BRIEF. The SANBS needed a way to remind donors just how important their donations are. 

INSIGHT. Usually, during the donation process, donors spend 5–8 minutes with nothing to do but wait for the blood bag to fill. The agency identified this as the perfect opportunity to get the message across. 

SOLUTION.  By giving donors earphones, we gave them a completely unexpected experience, immersing them in an intensely real 3D sound journey from the POV of someone involved in an accident – in desperate need of blood. To create the 3D experience, we approached the sound design completely differently from conventional audio. A full cast of voice artists were commissioned to physically enact each separate scene of a 5-minute-plus mini-drama in real environments, positioning their bodies to capture their spatial orientation in 3D audio. This was achieved by manipulating specialised twin microphones and directional recording devices around the actors in each environment. Not only did the performances have to capture the realism and intensity of the crash victim’s journey, but we also needed to complement them with hundreds of physically created sounds captured in 3D to build complete sound environments. The binaural experience was then further enhanced by spatially layering and manipulating these sounds with virtual 3D audio software, with the complete experience edited and crafted for maximum impact in final mix. 

RESULT. The result was an intense, immersive 3D audio experience played individually to donors as they waited for their blood bag to fill, allowing them to vividly experience every aspect – from seconds before the crash, to the paramedics’ arrival, to the critical moment in the emergency theatre where their life was saved thanks to an emergency blood donation: a donation just like the one the donor was giving at that exact moment. All making them realise that a few minutes of their time, is worth a lifetime for someone else.