Hate the wait:
using New Yorker's impatience to make a point

Organ Donation is a difficult topic at best. It involves reminding people of their mortality (always a bad idea), hinting at cutting out organs after death (a worse idea), but informing people they can save lives (a great idea).

The insight for us came in the form of a horrible fact: EVERY 15 HOURS A NEW YORKER DIES WAITING FOR AN ORGAN.These deaths are preventable. Many people intend to become organ donors, yet don’t until it’s too late. We wanted to make potential donors aware of this situation.

We thought it best to make this fact visceral to New Yorkers.

New York City is a strange place. Being rude is not considered rude. But being forced to wait, for any reason, is a high crime. Someone at the front of a checkout line pays slowly with coins? New Yorkers huff in frustration. Watch tempers flare when a tourist randomly stops on the sidewalk. It’s a hurry-up place. So we decided to use this emotion.

We visualized a line of people waiting, only for organs. We set the line in a gritty downtown NYC setting, to make it relatable. We imagined someone on the line had died, waiting -- this person is not immediately obvious, the toe tag and dead feet is the tip off.

The headline: IT KILLS NEW YORKERS TO WAIT IN LINE brings home the fact that New Yorkers hate to wait, as in “It’s killing me to wait!”. But it has a second, more serious meaning when you see the dead foot, then the subhead: “EVERY 15 HOURS A NEW YORKER DIES WAITING FOR AN ORGAN”. The full effect was devastatingly powerful.

These ads were placed in places where New Yorkers waited: subway platforms, subway cars, elevators, taxis. Flash mobs formed spontaneous lines, calling attention to the cause. We even painted a billboard outside the Holland Tunnel, where traffic backs up daily (Upworthy raved about it -- check out the article. And Lürzer’s Archive has the TV spot on their site.)

The result? A record amount of people registered to become Organ Donors, which most importantly meant many lives saved.