2022 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Girl Guides of Canada (GGC) is a leading non-profit organization for girls, offering a safe and inclusive space for them to come together and unleash their potential. Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on how GGC could operate. While programming continued virtually, membership saw a significant decline.

With schools reopened and public health restrictions rolled back, GGC programming could safely return to in-person gatherings. They needed to rejuvenate the membership base and compel parents of girls aged five to eight to register their daughters this fall. But GGC first needed to get back on parents’ radars now that COVID
restrictions were lifting.

Being a girl today looks different than it used to. Girls have powerful role models, like Amanda Gorman, Greta Thunberg, and Simone Biles, and they’re becoming more outspoken and ambitious. GGC can help them with that, but many parents didn’t see it that way. Research showed that perceptions of GGC were dated; parents assumed GGC is the same as when they were kids or only associated them
with selling cookies.

Coming out of lockdown, GGC offered a true antidote to the 18 months of isolation and stress experienced during COVID. When girls have a safe and nurturing space to gather, they discover so much - about themselves and their potential. They needed to showcase that powerful things happen when girls get together.

The idea: take a symbol of how people already perceive GGC and use it to demonstrate the reality of GGC today and how amazing things happen when girls get together. They turned campfire songs into
Girl Guides Fire Songs.

They took three well-known campfire songs – “Bingo,” “Down by the Bay,” and “Wheels on the Bus” – and created anthems that addressed important themes to inspire girls, like equality and inclusion, speaking up, and individuality. They cast a group of five girls to form a band and record the songs, then worked with Juno-winning, music video director (and former Girl Guide) Emma Higgins to shoot two music videos.

The music videos, including lyric versions to sing along to, were released over the course of a month, with all three tracks being released on Spotify and YouTube.

Within the first weeks of launch, Girl Guides has already seen registrations track ahead of last year, with the campaign achieving a 28% lift in total traffic to GirlGuides.ca and 89% lift in total traffic to the Join Us page year over year. The campaign also garnered over 3,200 organic views of “Girls Let’s Go” on YouTube in less than a month, and over 1,200 organic views of the second video, “We Come to Play,” in its first week alone.

National media coverage highlighted the songs, totalling over 30 hits to date, including a full page article in Toronto Star and dedicated segments on Global News, CityNews, and CBC Radio.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Brian Murray
Art Director: Sarah Quinto
Writer: Julia Forrester
Design Director: Dejan Djuric
Designer: Crystal Huang
Account Team: Alexa Macdonald, Kara Oddi, Alyssa Guttman
Executive Strategy Director: Heather Segal
Head of Digital: Sean Bell
Digital Strategist: Shaunagh Farrelly
Client: Girl Guides of Canada
Clients: Jill Zelmanovits, Andrea MacBeth, Heather Palm, Heather Auden, Joy Jochico
Producers: Elvira Labate, Tim Lynch, Revital Grunberg
Media Agency: OMD
Media Team: Michelle Jairam, Cobi Grein, Natasha Cappelli, Alessia Bolzon
PR Agency: spPR Inc.
Production House: The Field
Director: Emma Higgins
Music House: SNDWRx
Music Director: Didier Tovel
Post-Production Company: Zulubot
Post-Production Producer: Adam Palmer, Sarah Dayus
Editors: Ashlee Mitchell, Jay Baker
Online Artist: Felipe Chaparro
Edit Assistant: Adrian Gluvakovich
Production Artist: Mila Lukezich