Missing Type

So yeah-- the PR professional who is working with Ryan Lochte kind of has her/his hands full these days. I think they tried their best to coach him for the interview with Matt Lauer, but when he didn't understand what was being asked, he hit the default button and went back to saying how sorry he was.

My two cents is that Lochte will get what he wants out of this. He needs a career outside of swimming and this will help generate enough buzz to convince an executive somewhere to put him back on a TV series of some sort. It doesn't matter that Lochte lied and ran, put his teammates in a bad spot, and was unconvincing in his apology. He'll get his.

Moving along...

I've seen the #missingtype hashtag in the news recently. NHS Blood and Transplant and London-based PR firm Engine Group have come together on this campaign during National Blood Week (August 16-21) to raise awareness of and increase blood donations worldwide. The campaign spanned 21 countries and involved 25 blood services.

Anyhow, many businesses such as Pizza Hut, Google, Microsoft and Xbox, as well as many English Premier League football teams, and various public establishments like museums have either darkened out or eliminated the letters A, B, and O from their names, as those three letters (and their variants) are the most common blood types.

It was a big success in 2015, with nearly 700 pieces of coverage. Social media also picked up on it, as the hashtags #NationalBloodWeek and #MissingType were trending. Close to a half million people engaged with the campaign on Facebook.

I can't stop thinking about what a wonderful idea this is, and how pleased I am that this is taking off. It reminds me of the Ice Bucket Challenge from a few years ago and how much of a difference that made toward ALS research.

But the biggest success is that over 30,000 people registered to donate blood. Here's to hoping the trend continues this year and that folks continue to donate in the long term.