Immortal Fans

Why it works

A football club that asked its supporters to keep cheering after death. In Brazil the biggest barrier to organ transplants was family authorisation, so Ogilvy Brasil gave the supporters of Sport Club Recife — among the most passionate in the country — a reason to have that conversation: the first organ-donor card issued by a football club. Patients on real transplant waiting lists made the appeal themselves, promising fans that their eyes would keep watching the team and their hearts would keep beating for it, and at the launch match players walked onto the pitch hand in hand with them while a stand signed up new donors. Some 51,000 fans declared themselves donors — more than the club's stadium holds — and, the agency says, organ donation rose 54% within a year. It won the Promo & Activation Grand Prix at Cannes 2013. It is studied for channelling tribal loyalty, sport's most durable emotion, into a behaviour that saves lives.