Sickkids Foundation: Sickkids Vs [image]

Credits & Description:

Title: Sickkids Vs
Agency: Cossette, Sickkids Foundation
Brand: Sickkids Foundation
Country: Canada
Entrant Company: Cossette, Toronto
Advertising Agency: Cossette, Toronto / Sickkids Foundation, Toronto
Media Agency: Omd Canada, Toronto
Pr Agency: Cossette, Toronto
Production Company: Jam3, Toronto / The Vanity, Toronto / Westside Studio, Toronto / Skin & Bones, Toronto / The Mill, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Peter Ignazi (Cossette)
Chief Creative Officer: Carlos Moreno (Cossette)
Communications Specialist: Leigh Morgan (Cossette)
Creative Director: Jaimes Zentil (Cossette)
Creative Director: Craig Mcintosh (Cossette)
Director, Strategy: Fernando Aloise (Cossette)
Designer: Natasha Michalowska (Freelance)
Agency Producer: Dena Thompson (Cossette)
Account Supervisor: Olivia Figliomeni (Cossette)
Vp, Brand Director: Michelle Perez (Cossette)
Chief Strategy Officer: Jason Chaney (Cossette)
Executive Producer: Dan Ford (Skin And Bones Film Company)
Editor: Marka Rankovic (Skin And Bones Film Company)
Executive Producer: Liane Thomas (Skin And Bones Film Company)
Director Of Photography: Jackson Parrell (Jackson Parrell Cinematography)
Flame Artist: Sean Cochrane (The Vanity)
Colourist: Andrew Exworth (The Vanity)
Photographer: Nikki Ormerod (Westside Studio)
Music Creative Director: Didier Tovel (Sndwrx)
Music Artist: Donnie Daydream Feat: Richie Sosa (Donnie Daydream Feat:Richie Sosa)
Executive Producer: Michael Dobell (Jam3)
Vp, Brand Strategy And Communications: Lori Davison (Sickkids Foundation)
Director, Integrated Brand Marketing: Kate Torrance (Sickkids Foundation)
Director, Public Relations: Sandra Chiovitti (Sickkids Foundation)
Director, Digital Projects: Mark Jordan (Sickkids Foundation)
Marketing Manager: Tina Tieu (Sickkids Foundation)
Senior Re-Toucher: Trevor Gauthier (Cossette)
Director: Mark Zibert (Skin And Bones Film Company)
Manager, Patient Ambassador Program: Lisa Charendoff (Sickkids Foundation)
Outcome:
The SickKids VS campaign from October 2016 to December 2016 was the most successful advertising campaign in the hospital’s 141-year history, raising a total of $57.9 million. The online films garnered 8 million + views and 500 million+ impressions. Online donations rose ? 695% with ? 32% in the number of transactions and a ? 63% increase in average donation dollar amount. Best of all, our biggest gains were among younger, male donors.
Strategy:
We decided to stop acting like a charity and start acting like a performance brand, in the vein of Nike and Under Armour. We demonstrated we were a winning brand and that any donation, no matter how small, would achieve tangible results. Our bold, intense, in-your-face, and inescapable (we dominated the city) advertising was designed to jolt potential donors (specifically targeting a younger and more male audience who hadn’t contributed before) off the sidelines and into the fight. People are far more likely to donate if they feel that an organization is on the cusp of something significant and far more apt to pay attention when a tone shifts significantly.
Relevancy:
The SickKids VS campaign changed the way children’s hospitals could communicate with their donor base. We broke category conventions by rejecting the typical sad and helpless tone, and standard small and passive media placements. Instead we created bold, intense, and in-your-face advertising blanketing the entire city in a wide variety of mediums and placements so as to become inescapable and unignorable.
Synopsis:
After 141 years as a world-renowned hospital, SickKids’ building was old and in desperate need of a major overhaul. So too was the brand. With consumers being trained to expect a specific tone and message from cause marketing, the typical sad and helpless advertising approach no longer broke through. Our donations were flatlining. The money was also coming from the same donor set, which was aging out and skewed heavily female. In order to succeed, SickKids needed to jolt new donors off of the sidelines. We wouldn’t reach our ambitious fundraising goals unless we did something radically different.
Execution:
Typical children’s hospital advertising operates like most other charities, choosing small and passive ad placements to appear helpless and needy. By reframing ourselves as a performance brand, we needed to act like one. We launched with a bold and intense :120 film during the Toronto Maple Leafs home opener (in arena and on broadcast) thus guaranteeing the majority of Torontonians would be watching. From there, we pushed out further films online, and blanketed the city with massive, eye-catching, high profile placements. We dominated Yonge + Dundas square (Toronto’s version of Times Square) with aggressive and assertive photography or our patients. We plastered billboards across the city, wrapped streetcars, and even completely took over the inside of the hospital itself with large installations. We also created a website where the content would tailor itself to the specific fight a donor chose.
Campaign Description:
We redefined the word ‘sick’ (long part of our hospital name) by instead focusing on the fierce fighting spirit and never-give-up will to win that children with severe illness possess. In doing so, we not only empowered our patients but we also reframed SickKids as a competitive performance brand (from a charity brand) with a single goal – to win.By positioning ourselves as a single, unified, and highly competitive team we called our our enemies and put them on notice. It was SickKids VS cancer, cystic fibrosis, heart defects, liver failure, autism, and any other illness that dared to take from us. Gone were the sad, helpless, tear-inducing commercials and small, passive ad placements typical of the children’s hospital category. Instead we portrayed our patients, doctors, nurses, and researchers like Nike would one of their star athletes – tough, resilient, and unyielding and we gave them the eye-catching