2026 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is not only the #2 children’s hospital in the world, it also has some of the best-known and most-impactful fundraising campaigns globally.

So, when SickKids turned 150, a momentous occasion for the hospital, they wanted to mark the anniversary in a way that felt fresh and would galvanize donors. But it still had to feel right for the brand.

And while SickKids was excited to celebrate its 150-year anniversary, it would be doing so in a climate of pessimism and reluctance to donate. A majority of Canadians are feeling overwhelmed, stressed and pessimistic. With heaviness and stress at every turn, people begin to feel desensitized to the causes that need their help. Charitable donations in Canada are in decline, hitting a 20-year low.

The agency needed a campaign to counteract all of that. Something that would reinvigorate the love for a 150-year-old hospital, and encourage donations during a time when people are being tighter with their wallets than ever.

Their goal was to create a campaign based on a universal, emotional truth, to connect to new audiences and motivate one-time donations.

Their objectives were to drive $800k in one-time digital donation revenue, acquire 5,928 new one-time donors and generate 20% increase in year-over-year revenue.

The agency began by digging into the category, and found that fewer Canadians are donating, to any cause. This is affected by the state of the economy, as well as general global uncertainty. When the world feels so heavy, people become desensitized to what’s happening around them and think less about the future.

Through primary research, they also found for SickKids, the most likely donors are those with a personal experience with the hospital. They are grateful for the care given to their child or family member and feel close to the cause already.

This unlocked their breakthrough moment: Canada’s population is rapidly aging, which means fewer people have a connection to the hospital overall. They needed a strategy that would create a link between an increasingly childless population and a children’s hospital.

To overcome that inertia, they needed a single-minded, action-oriented insight. And while SickKids hitting the milestone anniversary of turning 150-years-old was impressive, but it wasn’t relatable to average people. But everyone understands birthdays.

They realized that at its core, a 150-year anniversary campaign was really about birthdays. And that led the agency to their insight: every child deserves to get to their next birthday. Birthdays are a time for celebration and festivities. But while we all have a birthday, not everyone gets to celebrate their next one. Some of us have far too few.

This led them to refocus their strategy from the hospital to the patients. The real birthday they had to talk about wasn’t SickKids’, it was the birthday every single patient is already fighting for: their next one.

“Fight for Every Birthday”: an anniversary campaign that galvanizes support by focusing on the only gift that really matters, a child’s next birthday.

For patients at SickKids, making it from one birthday to the next isn’t a given. It’s a fight. Day by day, week by week, month by month, patients, families, and the hospital fight forward. Their fight is not dissimilar to that of a professional athlete. The game, match, or bout, is just a marker. The real fight is what happens every day before that.

So, we joined two highly distinct visual and emotional worlds: athletic training and children’s birthdays. Featuring 23 real SickKids patients in a series of athletic training scenes blended with birthday imagery, we depicted patients literally training and fighting for their next birthday. These surrealist sequences and real-life moments are interwoven to create a tapestry that communicates the emotional truth of an experience that cannot be put into words.

Just over halfway through our campaign, with a new wave of advertising running from early October through the end of the year, the impact of this campaign has been significant.

$776k raised, 97% of our revenue goal

5,394 one-time donors, 91% of our goal

+44% in YOY revenue, more than 2x our objective.
Other results include:
+28% in one-time donations YOY
+49% increase in donation intent
+181% YOY increase in average donations
307M impressions from 657 pieces of coverage

SickKids 150th anniversary was the catalyst, but the real story focused on the fight to save the lives of its patients, so that they can get to that next birthday.

Many Canadians have a story relating to SickKids, and with SickKids being the #2 pediatric hospital in the world, it is a source of Canadian pride.

In English speaking countries, the “How Old Are You” Song is sung immediately following “Happy Birthday” counting up to reach the age the child is turning. For the film’s soundtrack, we made an orchestral rendition of this children’s song, featuring vocal performances from real patients, except instead of stopping at their own age, they counted into the forties, fifties and beyond, surpassing traditional life expectancy all the way up to the age of the hospital at 150, elevating an ordinary children’s song into a powerful anthem.

We wanted to convey a real sense of innocence and collective positivity, inspired by the feeling of a teacher accompanying children on acoustic guitar in a classroom. From there, we created an expansive score, but always with the children at the heart of the music. We were able to create this track before the shoot, so it informed the performances of the children at the hospital who were recorded during production. The live instruments and amazing musicians that played them bring so much to the work, in particular, the guitar, vocals, piano, organ, and solo violin.

Credits

Client: SickKids Foundation
CMO: Heather Clark
VP, Head of Brand, Content & Communications: Kate Torrance
Director, Brand Marketing Management: Roy Gruia
Director, Public Relations & Communications: Sandra Chiovitti
Associate Director, Brand Marketing: Jessica Myers
Associate Director, Brand Strategy, Governance & Production: Tina Tieu-Lafrance
Associate Director, Public Relations: Tania Kwong
Manager, Integrated Brand Marketing: Joanna Yu
Manager, Brand Strategy, Governance & Production: Anne Hernandez
Coordinator, Brand Strategy, Governance & Production: Melody Zhang
Manager, Public Relations & Stakeholder Relations: Taylor Huff
Associate, Community Stakeholder Relations: Kylie White
Coordinator, Community Stakeholder Relations: Dymond Phillip
Agency: FCB Canada
CCO: Nancy Crimi-Lamanna
EVP, Global Creative Partner: Danilo Boer
ECD: Andrew MacPhee
ACD's: Jacob Pacey, Brendan McMullen
Copywriters: Jacob Pacey, Reena Feldman
Art Directors: Brendan McMullen, Erika Jee
EVP, General Manager: Tracy Little
GAD: Rose Noble
Account Supervisor: Sophie Seidelin
Head of Corporate Communications and Reputation: Tim Welsh
Associate Director, Global Communications & Content: Emilie Sharp
CSO: Shelley Brown
VP, Strategy Director: Shelagh Hartford
VP, Broadcast Production: Sarah Michener
Senior Broadcast Producer: Tess Waisglass
Production: Iconoclast
Director: Clément Durou
Executive Producer: Charles Marie Anthonioz
Production Service: Merchant
Executive Producer: Ian Webb
Producer: Maryna Petrenko
Director of Photography: Shady Hanna
Edit: Work Editorial
Editor, Longform: Neil Smith
Cutting assistant-Longform, Editor -:60 & :30: Fatos Marishta
Producer: Victor Medina
Head of Production: Chris Delarenal
EP: Alejandra Alarcon
Managing Director: Erica Thompson
Sound by Soundtree Music
VFX and Colour by ARC Creative
Casting: Powerhouse Casting