British Heart Foundation stops Heart radio ads

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has launched a campaign interrupting ads on Global’s Heart Radio Network and original podcasts to raise awareness about its research.

Omnicom Media Group agency PHD brokered a deal with Global, to stop commercial ads for brands inside and outside of PHD’s client base on all Heart channels including Sainsbury’s, On the Beach, heycar, Admiral Insurance, Dunelm, Cazoo and Checkatrade throughout the day with the sound of a beeping heart monitor which flatlines to reveal someone’s heartbeat stopping.  Global worked with Goodstuff Communications to secure the non-PHD clients.

Claire Sadler, chief marketing and fundraising officer at the BHF called it “the perfect blend of message and medium” that will grab attention and deliver a message in an “impactful, unexpected way” at a national scale.

To complement the audio campaign, Dr Charmaine Griffiths, BHF CEO, will appear on Shelagh Fogarty’s LBC show to discuss the charity’s work into researching genetic cardiomyopathies, inherited heart muscle diseases that can cause the heart to stop suddenly, or cause progressive heart failure in young people.

Every week in the UK, 12 people under the age of 35 die of a sudden cardiac arrest, often caused by one of these inherited heart diseases.

The campaign coincides with the BHF’s largest ever research grant of £30m to CureHeart, a global collective of scientists from the UK, the US and Singapore that is developing gene therapy technologies to edit faulty genes that lead to these diseases developing.

Claire Bullock, business director at PHD, said: “There are some great ideas that, on paper, look too difficult to pull off. This could have been one of them, but we’ve had the delight of working with a client and a media partner who aren’t fazed by making difficult things happen. We’re looking forward to hearing weeks of hard work and collaboration come to life and grab listeners’ attention across the UK.”