2013 highly commended: The Peres Centre for Peace, Not For Profit - case study

To get Israelis and Palestinians who had lost loved ones in the conflict to voluntarily donate their blood to one another, in a powerful gesture of reconciliation and hope.

The insight behind Blood Relations can be summarized in a single question:

"Could you hurt someone who has your blood running through their veins?"

The question helps us to see the conflict from an entirely new perspective – one based on commonality, not difference. By sharing our blood, we can create a physical union, an unbreakable bond, between people otherwise poles apart. Only such a bold, audacious step could succeed in breaking through the cynicism and despondency that has colored how each side has come to view the other.

Blood Relations targeted the hearts and minds of a local, a regional and a global audience.

A global blueprint

In order to overcome the many cultural, linguistic and semantic barriers we faced in engaging such a diverse audience, we chose the one thing that unites and talks to all people: the blood that runs through all our veins.

Blood was both the message of the campaign, and the 'media' used to deliver the message of reconciliation and hope.

The idea of 'sharing blood instead of spilling blood' would be immediately understood by all audiences and cultures.

The newsworthiness of the Blood Relations story was also a key strategic consideration, as it was critical to the success of our PR efforts to disseminate the campaign message to a global audience. We would be competing for media coverage with the hundreds of news items coming from the Middle East. Our strategy was to use the mutual blood donation concept and the universal human message it delivered to provide media outlets with a refreshingly up-beat and inspiring Middle East story.

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