Research

For my Public Relations Publications course at the University of Oklahoma, I have been tasked with designing a letterhead and a business card for a company of my choice. For this assignment I decided to design these things for the Oklahoma Blood Institute, a company that I currently intern for.

The Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI) is the ninth largest blood center in America. OBI hosts blood drives to supply blood to over 140 medical facilities within the state of Oklahoma. The main purpose of OBI is to educate the people of Oklahoma who are able donors about the importance of donating blood because there are so many who are in need of it. Every two seconds, someone needs blood, and yet less than ten percent of able donors give blood. The media and marketing portion of OBI focuses on maintaining relationships with existing donors and also educating potential donors about what it means to give blood.

As a company that is sustained by volunteers, OBI believes strongly in giving back to the community and preaches this as high importance to all employees and volunteers. As the main supplier of blood in the state of Oklahoma, OBI is not faced with any competitors, but only with the task of finding more people who are willing to participate in blood drives. It is of high importance that all who volunteer have the best experience possible so they will want to do so again in the future.

Not only does OBI worry about the safety of the patients that will be receiving the blood through transfusions, OBI is very careful to test all blood that is donated and if something pops up they contact the donor and help them to seek the appropriate medical treatment. OBI was the first company in the United States to offer Prostate-Specific Antigen testing to screen for prostate cancer. They were also very vital in the development of the HIV Antigen test that was developed in 1985.

Because OBI does not compete with any other companies, as an intern I am simply tasked with educating the public about the importance and benefits of donating blood. A positive aspect that goes along with not having any competitors, is that OBI gets to focus fully on planning events and making sure that they are as successful as possible. Pairing with over 2,500 organizations, OBI successfully puts on over 4,000 events annually. A lack of blood during surgeries is not a problem in Oklahoma because of the great success that OBI has built up over the years, but many other parts of the country suffer from this issue.