Soap Opera Character Saved by Fictitious Organ Donation

Worldwide, there is a positive trend in the number of organ donations. Even in Brazil, organ donation statistics improved. We don’t know if this is happening because of Sport Club Recife and Ogilvy Brazil’s amazing campaign “Immortal Fans” or due to McCann Health Brazil and Hospital Moinhos de Vento’s project “Herança Valiosa” in which the creatives used Fabergé eggs do draw people’s attention to this issue. We really can’t tell if the statistics have positively changed thanks to these campaigns, but we are thankful that there are people taking initiative. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Peru, which has the lowest number of organ donors in Latin America. How low? 1.6 donors per million of citizens. That’s not much, is it?

So how do you make locals learn about the importance of organ donations? You use what they love the most. Of course, these are not our thoughts. The interesting idea comes from the clever minds at Circus Grey and Peruvian Ministry of Health. Together they discovered a thing Peruvians love the most and decided to use this to empower citizens to become donors. And what else is more appreciated in the country than soap operas? We bet that you didn’t know until now, but in Peru, soap operas have the highest audience levels in the whole of Latin America. TV series are so popular in here that when a character dies it simply becomes a piece of nationwide news, with massive media coverage.

The Lima-based agency decided to take advantage of this phenomenon and demonstrate to the whole population of Peru how important it is to be an organ donor. It then launched “The Life Saving Soap Operas” campaign, which is an initiative that realizes an organ donation between two characters from two different series. By changing the scripts of the two soap operas, the creative team managed to execute an organ donation, just to give to the population a lesson of how important this is.

Circus Grey took “Ojitos Hechiceros 2,” one of the leading series in the country, and “killed” Yair, who then “donated” his kidneys to a character from a totally different series, Lorenzo, the main character of “Señores Papis.” The operation saved Lorenzo’s life and allowed the audience to further immerse themselves in the plot of both soap operas. This way, the campaign has become a Pop Culture Crossover that started in fiction to save the lives of thousands of people in reality.

And just like that, Peruvians learned about organ donation. Over 8.5 million women were reached through this action. The campaign received more than 5 million impressions in free media. But most importantly, in just a week, the numbers of organ donors in Peru increased by 200%, saving the lives of 11 patients. And that’s what we call a successful campaign!