This morning, the citizens of the city faced a rather unusual sight, it seemed that the advertisements of many companies on the billboards were illegible due to an error. They were missing the letters A, B and O. However, this is not a mistake, but a community campaign to remind citizens of the importance of blood donation.
With this, the companies participating in the campaign want to draw attention to the fact that every year more than 2,000 patients need blood units and the blood bank needs blood donations. Companies have “given” their A’s, B’s and O’s and are encouraging citizens to do the same. The project was born out of a brainstorming at the advertising agency Aldeilis og Sjóvá and was partly inspired by a similar campaign in the UK.
The companies in question are Sjóvá, Elko, Hagkaup, Ali, Optical Studio, Tuborg, Krónan, Domino’s, Bílréttingar Sævars, Bónus, VR, Kökling and Pósthúsið Mathöll.
On the Web The blood bank you can see which blood groups are most needed at any given time and citizens are encouraged to carefully consider donating blood.
“We wanted to remind you of the importance of blood donation, but each blood donation can certainly save three lives, and large companies can encourage employees to donate blood, among other things, by allowing employees to donate blood during working hours.” Even those who cannot donate for some reason can participate by encouraging others to donate blood. Sjóvá is a pretty big ad buyer and we wanted to use the space we have to support this important and fun project,” says Jóhann Þórsson, Marketing Director of Sjóvá.
“Blóðbankinn welcomes this excellent initiative by Icelandic companies. Social responsibility will hardly be put in a nice suit. Our main objective in our activities is to ensure the safety of blood donors and blood recipients. Every year, more than 2,000 people need 15,000 units of blood. These are sisters, mothers, fathers and fellow citizens who need blood transfusions to recover from cancer treatment, major operations, accidents, births and newborn care in the intensive care unit, to name a few.Today there are 6,000 active blood donors in Iceland; 4,000 men and 2,000 women. Landspítala’s goal is to increase the number of active blood donors so that there are at least 8,000 after 2 years,” explains Sveinn Guðmundsson, chief medical officer of the blood bank.
