2026 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Stigma within healthcare settings remains an overlooked and deeply damaging issue.

Casey House is a specialty hospital in Toronto providing care for people living with and at risk of HIV. As a global leader in combatting HIV stigma, its annual #SmashStigma campaign has sparked public dialogue for years. But this year, instead of speaking to the general public, the brand spoke directly to a niche yet powerful audience: health care professionals.

While stigma is typically associated with ignorance, data shows it’s alarmingly common in medical settings – where people living with HIV (PLWH) face microaggressions, judgment, or outright denial of care. Research from The Positive Effect found that 1 in 5 people living with HIV (PLWH) in Canada has been denied care due to stigma. While health care professionals are among the most educated, they are not immune to bias – and unlike the general public, they are rarely the target of awareness efforts.

The Idea was to reach this audience, we created a fictional pharmaceutical brand – “Stigmavir” – and built a world around it.

The campaign unfolded across multiple platforms, each used to tell a distinct part of the story:
Direct mail was a key tactic. They secured a list of health care providers in Toronto and mailed them realistic “Stigmavir” packs with a call to action directing them to Stigmavir.ca, where they could download a stigma-free toolkit.

Stigmavir.ca housed the “stigma-free toolkit,” which provided health care professionals with practical resources to help make their clinics stigma-free. It included educational materials on HIV stigma, best practices for inclusive care, and printable signage to visibly designate clinics as stigma-free spaces. These materials signified to patients that they would receive respectful, non-judgmental care – helping to rebuild trust and encourage those living with HIV to seek treatment.

Street teams handed out branded “Stigmavir” packs in Toronto’s Hospital Row – a single stretch of Toronto where nearly every major hospital is located and over 100,000 health care professionals work – sparking immediate, face-to-face engagement and conversation among professionals.
Transit shelters, elevator screens, and wild postings near hospitals positioned “Stigmavir” like any new drug, embedding the brand into the health care landscape.

A parody drug commercial anchored the narrative, dramatizing the issue with real experiences from PLWH. It featured dancing health care professionals overcoming their bias with the help of “Stigmavir” – set to a reimagined version of I Will Survive. The final line flipped the familiar pharma call-to-action from “ask your doctor” to a more introspective prompt: “Ask yourself if Stigmavir is right for you.”

The campaign garnered 13 million earned media impressions (valued at $500,000 USD), raising awareness of stigma in healthcare. More than 1,200 healthcare practitioners downloaded the stigma-free toolkit. More than 25,000 people living with HIV were directly impacted with stigma-free healthcare and more than 1 million views on healthcare-targeted platforms.

Since launch, 50 new clinics join the movement every week, and the toolkit is being adopted internationally.

All this was accomplished with a $0 media budget, with vendors stepping up to donate media to propel our efforts.

Together, these components didn’t just speak to their audience – they immersed them in a satirical pharmaceutical world where stigma was the condition being treated. Rather than repeating a single message across platforms, each channel was used to deepen the story and expand the fiction, delivering a unique, complementary interaction that drove engagement.

Most notably, the campaign is now part of the first-year curriculum at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine, embedding long-term change in the education of future healthcare professionals.

Credits

Creative & Strategy
Chief Creative Officer – Joseph Bonnici

SVP Strategy – Jenn Bell

Creative Directors – David Mueller, Gints Bruveris

Associate Creative Director – Kyle Simons

Copywriters – Nathan Houseley, Kyle Simons, David Mueller

Art Director – Gints Bruveris

Designer – Feilin Fu

Production & Studio
Agency Producer – Michelle Pilling

Executive Producer – Tom Evelyn

Producer – Michelle Pilling, Tyna Maerzke

Line Producer – Adam Rodness

Production Coordinator – Tyler Klementti

Casting – Mann Casting

Choreographer – Mark Samuels

Post-Production:

Editor (Offline) – Tim Pienta

Editor (Online) – Jacques Parys

Colourist – Clinton Homuth

Audio:

Director / Engineer – Jared Kuemper

Accounts & Business
Business Lead – Jessica Cupola

Vice President – Lauren Baswick

Account Director – Cole Douglas

Director, Experiential – Jaclyn Kirk

Senior Account Manager – Samantha Sartor

Account Managers – Sreeja Sasidharan, Aaron Short

Associate Account Manager, XM – John Sequeira

Project & Program Management
Program Director – Oliver Glover

Project Manager – Sandra Morales-Macedo

Studio & Development
Studio Director – Sanjay Mangar

Studio Designer – Rudy Cho

Studio Display Ad Developer – Kevin Hy

Developer – Dov Atlin

Media
Media Planner – Karin Julman

Group Media Director – Carlo Fiore

Directors & DOP
Director – Mark Gilbert, Jared Kuemper

Director of Photography – Kris Belchevski