Transylvanian Music Festival Wants Your Blood

Home to medieval castles, gothic towns, lush terrain and Bram Stoker's Dracula, Transylvania's Untold Festival wants you to "Pay With Blood" in exchange for a discount on the music festival's tickets.

Donating your blood before Friday, 24 July as part of the Pay With Blood campaign offers punters going to the music festival a 30 per cent discount on their festival tickets, at the same time bolstering Romania's low rate of blood donations — only 1.7 per cent of the population, according to the National Institute of Blood Transfusion.

The clever marketing tactic suits the vampiric history of the region well — as The Guardian reports, the festival's director Bogdan Buta says, "Given that Romania faces an acute blood shortage in medical facilities, a campaign that takes inspiration from these myths in order to draw attention to a real problem is more than welcome."

Untold Festival will be hosting heavyweights like Armin Van Buuren, Avicii, David Guetta and Wu Tang Clan in the picturesque town of Cluj-Napoca, where the festival runs from 30 July to 2 August.

Untold Festival's PR Manager, Stefana Giurgiu said, "We were talking about how to incorporate Dracula into our festival and after seeing the numbers and how behind Romania was in blood donations we had this idea … Considering many youngsters in Romania don’t donate blood and our festival is aimed at youth they saw the opportunity."

Music lovers keen to offer up vials of their blood can donate at 42 blood centres around Romania, at a mobile unit that will be set up in Bucharest or at Cluj-Napoca's blood transfusion centre.