Radio Sales Café

I am working on a campaign for a plasma donor company.  Their budget is a little small for our clients but it could be workable.  I need a great commercial that isn't cheesy but still talks about getting paid for donating plasma to save lives.  Most of their target donor is a blue collar person who needs money - but most people don't know how much screening they go through to eliminate people who don't qualify.  The manager told me that he would like to educate - but even if the public are educated, it doesn't give them enough donors - so getting paid has to be brought up.

I was thinking about something like make some money while saving a life - but that seems a little cheesy, too - maybe it's me, though.  For the 1st month, we are thinking about doing a remote and some great spots the week after to keep the momentum - then a strong spot schedule for a couple of months, then maybe repeat this.  Any thoughts?

Celeste,

What about a message along the lines of, "We all want to do our part to help those in need, but when times are tough, and we have to watch our own budget, it can be difficult to find ways to help others.  (Name of Plasma Center) not only offers you a way to give back...they'll actually pay you for doing so. . . ." and then the spot could go on to provide some of the educational content you were talking about and/or direct listeners to the center's website, if there is one, to find out if they're a good fit for plasma donation.  Obviously, the wording is pretty rough, but maybe it's an idea that could work?

Good luck!

Rebecca

Here are some rather dry facts I found.  If I were going to do this campaign I would take the dry facts and add some humor to it:

If you've ever grown zucchini squash, you know you have a problem.  One day you're patiently waiting, the next your neighbors are hiding from you because you have too MUCH zucchini and are trying to find people to dump it on.  Well the same goes for Plasma...   yeah the stuff that makes up most of your blood.  You've got more than you need, and we know people who are literally dying to get it... [ commercial message]...  so come to [ whatever ] and bring us your plasma...   oh and we have enough zucchini already but Thank you!

• It takes 130 plasma donations to manufacture enough therapy to keep one patient with primary immunodeficiency disease healthy for one year.
• One liter of plasma yields roughly four grams of immunoglobulin, which is used to manufacture therapies to treat people with immune deficiencies. The average infusion needed for a person with a primary immune deficiency is 35 grams.
• Albumin, one of the proteins found in plasma, is used to treat patients who have sustained severe burns, trauma, or during major surgery.
• Serum albumin and fibrin, two proteins found in plasma, have powerful anti-shock and blood clotting effects, and are credited with saving countless lives of soldiers wounded on the battlefield during World War II (WWII). They continue to help wounded soldiers fighting in the war in Iraq today.
• On average, a plasma donor gives .8 liter of plasma per visit.
• The largest expense to manufacture plasma protein therapies are direct manufacturing costs (which includes obtaining starting material) – roughly 70 percent of the total cost of the therapy.
• Plasma-derived therapies and therapies made using recombinant DNA technology are referred to collectively as plasma protein therapies.
• Plasma protein therapies are used to treat people with diseases like hemophilia, which affects approximately 16,500 people in the U.S.
• Annually in the U.S., approximately 18 million plasma donations are made in order to meet demand for plasma-derived therapies that treat patients with rare, genetic diseases.
• Each year in the U.S., roughly 11 million liters of source plasma are donated.
• 20 million liters of plasma are used worldwide every year to manufacture plasma protein therapies for patients with blood clotting disorders, immune deficiencies or autoimmune or neurological disorders.

Sorry it took a bit to get back.  I actually used some ideas from everyone.  I sent the script draft to the client and he said he "Loved it!"  - exclamation point was his.  I'm having the spot voiced and we will go from there.  Still in the preliminaries but I am very hopeful.  fyi, I've been trying to get them on for nearly a year - their corporate was against radio because "they tried it before and it didn't work" - this will be a Great opportunity to show them how powerful radio can be if done right.

@Chris, thanks so much for pulling up that data.  I used one of the points from it.  I did like the humor you brought up but the client wanted it to be very professional.  Very hard to get corporations to understand that memorable is better...

@Tom, very cool that you could send the whole commercial so fast.  Rebecca's idea was almost identical to the spot.

Thanks to all!