A strategic communication management framework for blood donor recruitment messages

Abstract

Blood shortage is a global concern, as an insufficient supply of blood and blood products directly affects the lives of the many individuals in need of blood and blood products. The Western Cape Blood Service (WCBS), in the same manner, is experiencing severe blood shortages, which has necessitated them to increase their donor pool significantly and with a degree of urgency. In South Africa, the smallest percentage of blood donors comes from the country’s biggest demographic, black South Africans. One of the most effective ways of increasing the donor pool, especially in this demographic, is to bolster the WCBS’s strategic communication strategy. Within strategic communication, strategically formulated blood donor recruitment messages can contribute to reaching the goal of blood services, which is to supply a sustainable supply of blood and blood products. Tailored blood donor recruitment messages are therefore crucial to develop, especially given the benefit that tailored messages are more relevant to their audience and ultimately more persuasive than generic messages. This study recommends that achieving the goal of developing effective, that is, persuasive, tailored recruitment messages, requires a framework with a strong theoretical foundation in strategic communication. To that effect, a conceptual framework for blood donor recruitment messages was developed by applying the principles of strategic communication, which included environmental scanning; identifying, segmenting, and prioritising stakeholders; two-way communication; tailoring communication messages; and evaluating the impact of the tailored messages. The theories that underpin blood donor communication, such as the theories of altruism and persuasion, the compliance gaining theory, Burke’s theory of identification, the symbolic interaction theory, and the elaboration likelihood model were used as the theoretical foundation for the framework that was developed in this study for tailored blood recruitment messages. The WCBS was used as a case study to investigate how the blood service is communicating to recruit new donors. A semi-structured interview was conducted with the promotions and public relations manager as well as the communication practitioner of WCBS to establish how the organisation is communicating with non-donors. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on the WCBS recruitment messages in June of 2018, given that this is their annual blood drive month, to determine how the WCBS is communicating to recruit non-donors. Focus group interviews with residents in the Western Cape were conducted to know the perceptions of non-donors on the WCBS blood donor recruitment messages. A quantitative questionnaire was compiled to determine the information needs of non-donors. This study found that WCBS does not recruit non-donors strategically. The majority of blood donor recruitment messages are focused on communicating with donors and non-donors by means of

one message simultaneously. The WCBS does not segment and prioritise non-donors, and environmental scanning is not applied to determine the information needs of non-donors. The theoretical and practical impact of the study lies in the framework for strategic blood donor recruitment messages based on a combination of the conceptual framework, the perceptions of non-donors on the WCBS’s recruitment messages, as well as non-donors’ blood donation information needs.