The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2022
BNP Paribas' CPR-dummy video starring Poland's minorities became the Red Cross tutorial
To make first aid work despite prejudice, BNP Paribas built CPR dummies of Poland's minorities — the film became official Red Cross training.
BNP Paribas
What it had to solve
Created in Poland — ranked the third most xenophobic country in the world — the programme had to prepare people to save lives regardless of their prejudice. If first aid training could not reach the people society shuns, saving lives would still be conditional.
How it works
First Aid for Humanity was created in Poland, ranked the third most xenophobic country in the world. The brief was a moral one for a CPR programme: people had to be prepared to save lives regardless of their prejudice, so first aid could not quietly exclude the people society discriminates against.
BNP Paribas and its partners answered with three lifelike, fully functional CPR dummies based on three minorities who face discrimination for their faith, sexual orientation or poverty. Trainees practised compressions and rescue breathing on realistic versions of the very people they were taught to distrust, making the rescue itself the lesson.
The training video starring the people behind the dummies became the official Red Cross first aid tutorial, and the materials were used to teach first aid in schools and Red Cross centres across Poland. The campaign won a Bronze at Cannes Lions 2022, and D&AD's awards archive carries the work.
Why it lands
- The dummies make prejudice tangible: trainees practise life-saving skills on the exact people society tells them to shun.
- They are realistic and fully functional training aids, so the confrontation is real without sacrificing the first aid skill.
- The video starring the real people made the message institutional — the Red Cross adopted it as official teaching material.
- It reframes first aid as a moral act rather than a technical drill: saving lives regardless of prejudice.
What it did
The video became the official Red Cross first aid tutorial, and the campaign's materials were used to teach first aid in schools and Red Cross centres across Poland. The work for BNP Paribas and the Polish Red Cross won a Bronze at Cannes Lions 2022, and D&AD's awards archive carries the project.
What you can take
To dismantle prejudice, put its targets in the act of rescue itself: training people to save the lives of those they are taught to shun teaches the skill and the moral in one motion.
Since then
First Aid for Humanity was created by VMLY&R with BNP Paribas and the Polish Red Cross and launched in Poland in 2022. In the campaign's course, 24 people learned life-saving skills on the unusual dummies, which provoked fear, anxiety and curiosity — the very reactions the training was designed to work through. The training video went on to become the official Red Cross first aid tutorial, with the materials used to teach first aid in schools and Red Cross centres across Poland. The campaign won a Bronze at Cannes Lions 2022 and remains in D&AD's awards archive.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card