NHS Blood & Transplant

The Challenge: NHS-BT created a new Session Strategy & Marketing division to bring together the management of blood donation sessions, hospital targets and donor marketing – comprising 130 staff across 5 UK locations. In the midst of this restructure, the NHS had to urgently prepare for the possibility of a swine flu pandemic.

The Result: I was brought in as the Interim Director whilst they sought the permanent post holder. I quickly established a new senior management team, with more clearly defined objectives, and greatly improved marketing effectiveness by facilitating better collaboration between disenfranchised internal staff, the COI and 5 agencies. I introduced a new marketing and blood collection strategy based on a more sophisticated, attitudinal and faith-based segmentation model. Having this in place enabled us to swiftly build blood stocks when needed – we achieved the target increase of 65% in just 6 weeks; doubling number of new donors, halving the previous best acquisition cost and increasing web traffic by 300%.

“Sam realigned several different departments into one new division in a very short time, getting everyone working together, aligning all the disparate strands of activity in one direction – and improving our performance significantly. Her new marketing strategy introduced new channels not previously used by NHS BT – enabling us to successfully achieve stretched targets within the budget and timeframe. Sam uses her expert skills and direct, yet considerate, manner to deliver proven success.”

Steven Sugden – Head of Donor Services, NHS Blood & Transplant

“I really enjoyed working with Sam – we had some really steep targets to meet very quickly – Sam knew that the only way of succeeding was via a genuinely integrated approach. She was the driving force in binding a large group of agencies together, creating a ‘crack unit’ capable of delivering a genuinely integrated campaign at speed. We met the targets bang on time.”

Jamie Elliott – Deputy Managing Director, DLKW

“Sam made a step-change to the quality of the marketing at NHS-BT. She instilled a culture of measurement and accountability amongst both agencies and client, delivering immediate improvements. And she turned a disparate group of agencies into one coherent body.”