The power of responsive advertising was underlined by the Dutch Red Cross’ response to the collapse of Danish footballer Christan Ericksen at Euro 2020 with a dynamic social campaign underlining the life-saving importance of CPR-skills.  

The ‘Life Saving Stories’ campaign consisted of an innovative piece of CPR training on Instagram, which was conceived, developed and produced in-house by 180 Amsterdam, in collaboration with the Red Cross. 

The game consists of 35 animated Instagram Stories in which someone is resuscitated after a cardiac arrest based on the rhythm the person taps through the slides. By continuing to tap to the next story, the character stays alive.  

The social campaign is designed as both an educational tool and also a way to give bystanders the confidence to act quickly in an emergency.  

In the Netherlands, about 300 people each week have a cardiac arrest outside hospital. Research shows that bystanders, and frequently the younger generation, often don't know what to do, with five in six unable to perform CPR or use an AED, a device that can restore the heart rhythm. If both are used, the chance of survival increases by up to 50% if action is taken within six minutes. 

Kalle Hellzen, Chief Creative Officer at 180 Amsterdam explained: “The social media behavior of young people is often seen as negative. ‘Go and do something useful’, is what people often hear. With Life Saving Stories we do exactly that and turn the 'tapping behaviour' in Instagram Stories into a recognizable tool with which they can save the lives of, potentially older people, in the future.” 

Eline Nijhof, Head of First Aid at the Red Cross, added: “We are very enthusiastic about 'Life Saving Stories'. It is nice to offer a serious topic such as CPR to young people on the platform they already sit on every day. In this way we lower the threshold for learning CPR skills. Then the step to putting what they’ve learnt into practice follows automatically. This move also fits very well with our strategy to teach more young people first aid and CPR skills."