The ethos of winning at all costs is deeply embedded in sports culture. It’s seen in movies and TV, especially sports marketing with slogans like “Risk it all” and “Whatever it takes.” But winning at all costs takes on a whole different meaning when the price is someone’s life. That’s why, in 2019, the Government of Ontario enacted Rowan’s Law, a concussion protocol named after Rowan Stringer, a teenage rugby player who passed away after multiple concussions.

With a law in place to protect young athletes, the Ontario government set out to raise awareness around the signs of a brain injury, and change the risk-it-all mentality among coaches, parents and the athletes themselves. So Rethink created “The Risk,” the government’s own sports marketing spot that looks and feels like a typical high-octane creed to just doing it.

In the commercial, you see a young soccer player continuing to get up after each hit. As the story unfolds, she begins to falter with each impact reflecting a sign of concussion, including impaired hearing, blurred vision, dizziness and ringing in the ears. She eventually collapses as warnings “Don’t risk everything” and “Know the signs of a concussion” appear, articulating the dangers of pushing too hard after a concussion.

The film ran in cinema, broadcast and social, alongside a brand icon – a stop sign divided to represent two sides of the brain – that was placed in arenas and on uniforms and apparel. Hockey legend Eric Lindros, whose own career was cut short by concussion, was the campaign’s celebrity endorser.

The coverage gained more than 27 million impressions in just the first week of the campaign. In the days following the launch, “Rowan’s Law” became the number-one searched term on Google Canada, and in 2020, Rowan’s Law will become mandatory for all amateur sports across the province.