British Heart Foundation runs Heart-stopping disruptive audio campaign

To raise awareness of the British Heart Foundation’s funding of research to find the first cures for genetic cardiomyopathies (inherited heart muscle diseases that can cause the heart to stop suddenly, or cause progressive heart failure in young people), PHD has partnered the charity with Global, the media & entertainment group, to create a heart-stopping audio campaign on the Heart radio network and Global Original podcasts.

Today (Monday 1st August), commercial ads will be unexpectedly ‘stopped’ throughout the day with the sound of a beeping heart monitor that eventually flatlines – the shocking but familiar long tone a monitor makes when alerting medical staff to someone’s heartbeat stopping.

The heart monitor sound will interrupt ads from well-known brands including Sainsbury’s, On the Beach, heycar, Admiral Insurance, Dunelm, Cazoo, and Checkatrade, followed by a British Heart Foundation message detailing the impact of genetic cardiomyopathy and how the charity is funding research that aims to find a game-changing cure to stop the diseases from stopping hearts.

Goodstuff helped secure advertisers to take part in the disruptive campaign.

As part of the campaign, the BHF’s CEO, Dr Charmaine Griffiths, will also appear on Shelagh Fogarty’s LBC show to discuss the charity’s work.

The campaign coincides with the announcement of the BHF’s largest ever research grant - £30 million to CureHeart, a global collective of scientists from the UK, the US and Singapore who are pioneering revolutionary and ultra-precise gene therapy technologies that could silence or edit the faulty genes that cause inherited heart muscle diseases.

Claire Sadler, chief marketing and fundraising officer at the British Heart Foundation said: “Genetic cardiomyopathies are unseen killers. 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 muscle diseases.

“The partnership which PHD and Global have created for us is the perfect blend of message and medium that will grab attention and allow an important message to be delivered in an impactful, unexpected way at a national scale.”