Transylvania’s most notorious resident has inspired a local festival to offer tickets in exchange for blood.

The organisers of Untold in northern Romania are offering festivalgoers a discount if they donate a pint in a bid to fight the country’s shortage of blood donations. Taking inspiration from the region’s link to vampires, as made famous by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they’ve teamed up with Romania’s blood transfusion institute to launch Pay With Blood.

“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,” said Bogdan Buta, the festival’s director general. Forty-five people, many of them first-time donors, had signed up and given blood by noon on the campaign’s first day, reports the Guardian.

“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,” said PR manager Stefana Giurgiu. “Considering many youngsters in Romania don’t donate blood and our festival is aimed at youth [the blood transfusion institute] saw the opportunity.”

The festival, which runs from July 30 to August 2 in Cluj-Napoca, will give a 30% discount to anyone who donates blood at one of the country’s 42 blood centres until 24 July, as well as free one-day tickets to anyone who gives blood at a mobile unit in Bucharest or at the blood transfusion centre in Cluj-Napoca.

The line-up for the four-day festival includes Wu-Tang Clan, David Guetta, Armin Van Buuren, Tinie Tempah and DJ Premier.