British Heart Foundation is tapping into World Cup fever with a new campaign that reimagines football’s controversial three-minute hydration breaks into a vital fundraising and awareness platform.
“Three Minutes to Kill” has been devised by Saatchi & Saatchi and is built around a simple insight: while football fans have been describing the new hydration breaks as “three minutes to kill”, every three minutes someone in the UK dies from cardiovascular disease.
The creative frames the pauses in play as moments that can be put to better use, encouraging supporters to donate to BHF and help fund lifesaving research.
It is fronted by cardiac arrest survivors and footballers Tom Lockyer and Charlie Wyke, alongside Jack Sparkes, whose daughter was born with a heart condition.
Alongside social content featuring Lockyer and Wyke, BHF has worked with media partners including Sky Sports, Mail Metro Media, LadBible, Bauer and News UK to integrate the campaign directly into football coverage across live blogs, podcasts, News programming and radio.
Bespoke content from TalkSport presenters and former players Jamie O’Hara and Jason Cundy are also airing.
BHF chief executive Dr Charmaine Griffiths said, “Every three minutes, another family in the UK loses someone they love to cardiovascular disease. Through Three Minutes to Kill, we’re turning a pause in play into a moment that could help save lives.
“Football has an incredible power to bring people together, and we’re asking fans to use these three-minute breaks to donate to the BHF. Your support could help fund the next generation of lifesaving cardiovascular research, from pioneering work using artificial intelligence to better predict heart attacks, to new treatments and technologies that is transforming the lives of people living with cardiovascular disease in the UK today.
“So, when the game pauses, don’t just wait for play to restart – please donate to British Heart Foundation.”
The work has been designed to appear wherever football fans encounter hydration breaks during the tournament. The campaign’s media planning and buying, led by Omnicom Media’s PHD, places the message directly into the moments that inspired the idea, reaching supporters when play stops and attention shifts away from the pitch.
Saatchi & Saatchi chief creative officer Franki Goodwin commented: “The hydration breaks quickly became one of football’s most talked-about interruptions. We saw an opportunity to take a moment a lot of us have thought of as dead time, and when attention shifts away from the pitch, and give it a purpose. This work is all built around the uncomfortable truth that every three minutes someone in the UK dies from cardiovascular disease. By connecting those two things, we’ve turned a pause in play into an opportunity to help save lives.”
PHD client partner Claire Bullock added: “The power of this idea lies in its timing and context. Hydration breaks happen at predictable but high-attention moments, which gave us the opportunity to use mass-media football environments to align BHF’s message and media to the rhythm of the game – turning interruption into attention.”
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