Currently, there are 1,800 Australians on a waitlist for an organ transplant. While the majority of Australian’s support organ donation, only 36% of the population are registered to be a donor. But the biggest problems is, of the people who are registered to be donors, 53% of organ donations are overturned by family due to not knowing their loved ones wishes.

With the World Transplant Games being hosted in Perth, it was an opportunity to create a conversation with families Australia wide and increase registrations and family consent.

We started by giving transplant athletes who won medals at the games, an opportunity to honour the people who made their success possible.

We created the first medal in sporting history that could be split in half and given to living donors or a donor’s families as a gesture of thanks and gratitude.

During the games, we documented the splitting of the medals. Giving recipients, living donors and deceased donor’s families an opportunity to tell their unique stories of adversity and gratitude.

From the footage compiled, we created the documentary ‘Second Chance Champions’ to amplify the message - essentially hiding an organ donation drive in a sports doco.

The documentary and shorter content were distributed locally in partnership with Network 10, 10Play, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ to an Australian audience of 12+ million.

After watching the documentary, viewers were prompted to have a conversation with their family about organ donation. The shows page also linked to the Donate Life website which allowed viewers to then register to be organ donors.

On free to air we utilised the commercial breaks and ran ads featuring the transplant games athletes from the documentary. They all delivered a message relevant to them and their sport about how quick and easy it was for the audience to register to become a donor.

In other channels, we debunked some of the myths around organ donation and gave information about the games and the athletes.

$14+ million in earned media
60% uplift in organ donations during campaign
14% uplift in organ registrations during campaign

Beyond the campaign period, Second Chance Champions will be used as an asset to help increase organ donation ongoing.