August 2, 2023 • 25 mins
One simple idea forever changed the face of charity: Sickness doesn’t mean weakness.
To meet the aggressive fundraising goals of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, creative agency Cossette decided to stop talking like a charity brand and start acting like a performance brand. It showed the world what it looks like when sick fights back.
Launched in 2016, SickKids’ VS brand had the ambitious target of raising $1.5 billion – making it the largest fundraiser in Canadian health care history. By March of 2023, that $1.5-billion target had been met.
The campaign was a big risk with the bold ‘VS’ concept, and there was a media ‘backlash’, but that drew more supporters out of the woodwork.
The risk paid off, and the VS brand strategy became an instantly recognisable hit, with celebrities taking part (Cold Play’s ‘Fix You’ was donated for 30-second spots), and people got VS tattoos.
In this episode, we take a look back at where it all began. The idea, the origin story, the objective and the risk.
To meet the aggressive fundraising goals of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, creative agency Cossette decided to stop talking like a charity brand and start acting like a performance brand. It showed the world what it looks like when sick fights back.
Launched in 2016, SickKids’ VS brand had the ambitious target of raising $1.5 billion – making it the largest fundraiser in Canadian health care history. By March of 2023, that $1.5-billion target had been met.
The campaign was a big risk with the bold ‘VS’ concept, and there was a media ‘backlash’, but that drew more supporters out of the woodwork.
The risk paid off, and the VS brand strategy became an instantly recognisable hit, with celebrities taking part (Cold Play’s ‘Fix You’ was donated for 30-second spots), and people got VS tattoos.
In this episode, we take a look back at where it all began. The idea, the origin story, the objective and the risk.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
It transformed what was sort of always this handout help
us to this real position of we're winning the battle,
but it is still a battle and we want you
to join us. And that's why I loved it. It
was the boldness of what you could tell to the public,
(00:23):
but it was also the intimacy with which the campaign
could be driven at the individual level.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
In an ever changing world.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
That's all about stained connected, building connections and seeing where
the next collaboration takes a marketing campaign from an initial
brief to the follow through. What paths are going to
make a campaign success more than a possibility. Hi, I'm
Brett marchand CEO of Plus Company is Partner's and Possibility.
(01:00):
You may have heard about Sick Kids in Toronto. Today
we'll talk about the organization's huge fundraising targets and how
one simple idea forever changed the face of charity. Sickness
doesn't mean weakness. Joining me in this episode is Ted Gerard,
who has Sick Kids CEO, had the vision for the
Versus campaign and took a big risk with the bold
(01:20):
versus concept. We'll hear how he worked with Gassette to
make it the largest fundraiser in Canadian healthcare history, raising
one point seven.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Billion dollars in seven years.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We'll take a look back at where it all began,
the idea, origin, story, the objectives, and the risk.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Let's start maybe just some context, because we're talking about
sick kids obviously, and not everyone that listens to this
understands some of the nuances of running a hospital foundation,
because there's a hospital board and then there's a foundation
that raises all the money, right, and so maybe just
tell us a little bit about how that works in
your role, and then we'll drive into the campaign.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So the hospital was founded in eighteen seventy five, which
makes it one of the oldest children's hospitals in the world.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And it was.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Around that time when Dickens was in fact raising money
for Ormond Street Children's Hospital, which is the oldest children's
hospital in the world, that people began to realize that
you had to treat kids differently than you treat adults.
And essentially the hospital managed to eke its existence out
(02:32):
of private philanthropy in the community and the odd government grant.
And then it was really in the nineteen seventies when
foundations were carved away from the hospitals in order to
do two things. Number One, to make sure that any
monies that were raised from donors were kept separate from
(02:55):
government money i e. No scoop and take some of
that money away from from them. But secondly, to really
allow for focus on philanthropy and you know, leave the
heart surgery to the cardiac surgeons and leave the professional
(03:15):
fundraising and voluntarism to the people who do it as
a professional, as an advocation. And that's really the history
of the Kids. It was founded in nineteen seventy two
with two employees raising about a million bucks in the community.
And you know, over the period of time we have
(03:38):
grown to be one of the largest foundations in the
world dedicated to children's health, certainly the largest in Canada.
And I've had the privilege of overseeing the evolution of
the organization for the last fourteen years.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
You joined in two thousand and nine, it did it
was an interesting time to get a new job, by
the way, on the of the financial crisis, and when
did the discussion start to happen about a new campaign
and building the new hospital.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well it was really Most people don't realize this, but
it was a very planned evolution of the Kids campus
starting with a brand new research facility. Because our researchers
were scattered in different buildings in downtown Toronto. We built
(04:30):
the world's largest children's health research facility on Bay Street,
named in honor of a great gift from Peter Gilgan.
That was then the catalyst to move to the second phase,
which was building a new twenty eight story what we
(04:54):
call patient support center, which was to house all of
the executive and administrative and back end functions of the hospital,
and that would then further decant a number of people
who were working in the oldest part of the hospital.
And now we're at the stage of being in a
(05:16):
position to tear down the oldest part of sic Kids
and to rebuild it from scratch, to take what has
always been an aspiration of not just being the best
from a delivery of care model, but the best from
a physical facility model. And so people told me at
(05:39):
the outset, by the way, we have this grand vision,
now go execute against it. And I realized that I
loved the vision, but the execution was going to take
a fundamental change to have. The foundation had been doing
its business over the you know, the past decade, and
(06:02):
so undaunted by the challenge.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
We got started, and when you entered into the new
campaign I think was twenty sixteen or at least, I
mean that's when Verses came out. But obviously you even
though you hadn't announced at that point you were to
build a new hospital, you knew that was coming. What
was the target, what were you tried to raise?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, originally we had set a target of a billion dollars,
which would at the time have made it the largest
ever healthcare fundraising campaign in Canadian history. But is campaigns,
you know, come and go. The goal then got raised
to one point three billion, and then one point five billion,
(06:42):
and ultimately we closed the campaign on March thirty first
with one point seven billion dollars raised, which still makes
it the largest campaign for healthcare ever done in this
country and actually one of the most substantial campaig ever
done in the world for children's health specifically.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So yeah, that was to be very proud.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
By the way, it was proud, and I had my
sort of for me personally, part of the vision was
Sick Kids is very much one of those revered public
institutions in our city. As Jordan Bitov reminds me, he said,
there's two iconic brands in Toronto. One is the Toronto
may Beliefs and the other is the hospital. Post World War.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Two, when.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know, the troops were coming back home and Toronto
was home to maybe half a million people. Eighty five
thousand people out of a population about half a million
lined up to take a tour of Sick Kids on
the day that it opened. And it said to me
that there was something about the pride that the community
(07:54):
felt towards Sick Kids that I wanted to emulate in
this campaign, both in terms of it success but really
rallying the community around this cause.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
You definitely did that, by the way.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So we've heard about how it all began at Sick
Kids and the high targets that Ted and Sick Kids
set for this campaign. It was a pretty bold move
for the hospital, but let's hear more about the challenges
it faced to get buy in for this campaign. I mean,
you were there for seven years before we started the
new Versus campaign, and you've done some great advertising, by
(08:32):
the way. I mean, yeah, I think you know, Sick
Kids was well known for a place that did great advertising,
but you had a i mean, obviously a new challenge having.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
To raise that kind of money and billion to start
and you know, ended up at one point set a billion.
What else was challenging about the campaign?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Why?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Like, why did you come seek a sad what? You know?
What was the what? What was in your mind?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Well, there's something that our former VP of Brand Strategy
and Communications, Laurie Davison, always said, which was that there
was a sea of saneness to what everybody else was
doing and we were probably no different than that. Great campaigns,
but were they any different than so many others? And
(09:19):
if we really did want to emulate this sort of
pride in community, we needed to find a way of
engaging with new population groups and people who had never
thought about supporting sick kids in the past, and to
really be bold in the way in which we talked
about sick kids, because the vision was bold, and you know,
(09:41):
the way in which you tell your story has to
sort of match up with the sort of the boldness
of the vision. And that's when we said, you know what, pause, reset,
Let's do an RFP. Let's have a bunch of different
agencies come in and tell us how they might transform
(10:01):
the way in which we were branding and talking about ourselves.
And that led us to Cassette and the start of
what's been a phenomenal partnership.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Over the years. Yeah, seven years. I remember well by
the way I was. You know, we're here in the
in the in the offices in Toronto, and I think
it was both you and Laury came in to see
the original we did which I saw. I hate to
admit it, but only a few hours before you guys
did that, and I remember thinking, this is amazing, this
is this is transformative. I hope they have the guts
(10:36):
to do it, and you had the guts to do it.
So tell me, tell me how you felt when you
first saw it, when you first saw the idea of versus.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What I loved about the Versus campaign was the resiliency
of it in that it could be a rallying cry
for the community, but that you could take it down
to the lowest common denominator and make it a personal
story as well. So you know, I had my own
battle statement, which was, you know, Ted versus apathy, because
(11:09):
it drives me crazy that people who you know, should
probably be supporting charity aren't. So that was my battle statement,
but it became doctor Caplan's battle against neuroblastoma. It became
Jack's challenge against Hodgkins lymphoma, So there was an ability
(11:31):
to take it right down to the individual level. And
the other thing that it did is that it transformed
what was sort of always this handout help us to
this real position of we're winning the battle, but it
(11:52):
is still a battle, and we want you to join
us in this. And one of the ways you could
join us is by declaring much your own verses is
is and really trying to sell the story of what
we were trying to achieve as the kids. And that's
why I loved it. It was the boldness of what
(12:14):
you could tell to the public, but it was also
the intimacy with which the campaign could be driven at
the individual level.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And back to the earlier thing that you said and
that Laurie said to you, which is, you know, it's
a sea of sameness and particularly true with children's charities
and even children's hospitals, which is, it's all about children
being victims and or they need our help, and yeah,
you know, and this really did it in a completely
different way, right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, a different way. And you know, it was not
just always telling the story of the happy child that
was survived their diagnosis and was also prepared to take
on some of the very tough stories about a child
child to who you know, for instance, twenty percent of
(13:03):
kids still don't overcome a cancer diagnosis, and it was
you know, saying, well, let's tell you about grace, and
Grace was one of the twenty percent and you know,
we still have.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Work to do.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And it wasn't being afraid of shying away from those
tough stories as well. And interestingly enough, parents really got
behind this idea, parents of kids who were at sick kids,
because they had gone through their own personal struggles and
they wanted a way in which to celebrate and commemorate
(13:43):
the life of their kids.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Marxie were shot. All all the ads in the original ad,
I mean made a huge flash. I mean everyone was
talking about it. I mean, I've only made a couple
of campaigns or have been part of a couple of
campaigns in my life that have had that kind of
impact that that, and probably I am Canadian, like you know,
I mean just literally everyone was talking about it. But
it wasn't all positive at the very beginning, right like,
it had some controversy it did.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I mean, when you wake up the next morning after
having launched the campaign, and you see the headline in
the Globe and mail, Sick Kids Campaign misses the mark.
You have this sinking feeling in your gut that, oh God,
what have I done here? But you have to have
the courage of your convictions. And with Cassette's help, we
(14:29):
did a social audit of the reaction around the campaign,
and for every negative comment, there were over ten thousand
that were positive. And you know, usually that is the way.
You'll have a critic who writes a negative review and
doesn't mean you shut down the production, just as we
didn't shut down the campaign, and people were trying to
(14:52):
judge the campaign on the basis of one the first
time they saw it, as opposed to thinking about the
body of work that was to come and the stories
that we still had to tell. I had a mentor
who always taught me, have to have the courage to
rise above your principles. And in this case, you know,
you had the courage to move on and reassure people
(15:16):
like the board of directors and the hospital CEO that
the sky isn't falling. We didn't make a mistake here.
Let us prove it to you. And well, in the end,
I think we did.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I've never been thanked and applauded so much in my
whole career, and yet you're the well, I'm sure you've
got it all the accolades as well, which which are
so well deserved. I mean, and some other people actually
glombed onto it. I mean, it had that early criticism,
but that seemed to completely disappear early on. So talk
about some of the celebs who got behind it.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
They know, well, the one story that we featured on Grace,
who is one of the twenty percent of children who
didn't overcome her cancer diagnosis. It just so happens that
the family was friends with Hailey Wickenheiser, who you know,
national celebrity sports celebrity, Yeah, captain of the women's hockey
(16:15):
team and a wonderfully decent person who was training to
be a doctor actually herself. And it just so happens
that Haley was best friends with Ryan Reynolds, and Ryan
saw the work and he all of a sudden said,
tell me how I can help. You know, every time
we would put a new ad out there, Ryan would
(16:36):
be sending it to his network. And it wasn't before long.
I was getting donations in from places like Iceland and
Korea and you know, French Polynesia. And you know, was
it because of Sick Kids. Maybe not the institution, but
it was because the work was speaking so passionately to
(17:00):
the people who were watching it, and I think that
they were taken by the cause of children's health.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
We're going to take a quick break and when we
come back, we'll talk about how Sick Kids measured success
in this campaign and how it kept moving its objectives
higher and higher. Welcome back to Partners and Possibility. I'm
(17:35):
Brett Marshaun. Sick Kids Versus was clearly a huge success,
and Ted will share his key learnings.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Listen. It was copied a lot, and a lot of
other people have tried to do something similar, not to
the same effect. Obviously, it's won lots of awards internationally,
as you know, can I mean won everything, and I
think in many ways it's actually fundamentally changed people's point
of view about how to do great cause advertised. Yes,
you should be very proud of but I think the
numbers are the most impressive. Right. So you were telling
(18:05):
me earlier about sort of pre campaign, post campaign, what
the sort of run.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Rate was well, we were raising about eighty million dollars
a year when I arrived, and now it's well over
two hundred million dollars an hour. We had a couple
of one hundred thousand of donors who would give to
us each year. Now it's three hundred and thirty thousand donors.
(18:31):
And this all is because the profile of sick kids
was elevated through this process, but also the cause of
children's health was elevated, and I think that was really important.
And we've used the campaign to really reach new audiences
(18:52):
that we had not reached before. Our core demographic has
always been and women, and we needed to figure out
ways to reach the millennials of the world, the grandparents
who figure, I've done all my parenting, I don't need
to think about supporting sick kids, the new communities that
(19:16):
exist in a very diverse, multicultural country who may never
have thought about giving to a hospital before because it
was just was never part of their experience. And that's
why the tonality of the campaign was also important, because
(19:37):
we knew that, you know, if we're going to hit
the gamer community, you got to be telling the story
in a way that they're going to sort of get
there was more strategy that people probably don't realize that
went into the design of the campaign to reach audiences
and to tell the story from a different perspect than
(20:02):
just simply creating good ads. Right. By the way, this
is another part of the strategy that we did is
I credit Laurie Davison for all of this. Was making
a story out of the story. So trying to take
(20:22):
the campaign because we're a charity after all at the
end of the day, and we don't have you know,
McDonald's or Cheeto's budgets to spend on being able to
buy ad time. So what we did was involve the
(20:42):
different columnists and reporters in being able to talk about
the transformation, why we were doing it, what we hope
to achieve, et cetera, and then using their coverage of
the new campaign as a way to amplify what we
could buy. And all that earned media was huge.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So and it builds on itself, right because once you
get earned somebody talks about it, then they want to
see it, then they talk to other people about that. Well,
let's talk about what I mean. You've made one of
the great campaigns in Canadian history, if not in charity history. Honestly,
what would you tell somebody who's in your shoes eight
(21:28):
years ago or fourteen years ago, what advice would you
give them to do the same kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Well, number one, it's not being afraid to be bold.
I think you have to get outside of the typical
charity narrative, which is the sort of the handout, and
help us into really telling a compelling and somewhat edgy story. Secondly,
(21:57):
you've got to be prepared to invest, and I do
give our board full credit in that they were prepared
to invest in this campaign in a way that many
charity boards are not prepared to make the investment, and of.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Whom because they don't think marketing works or correct and
which I don't know how you don't look at your
campaign and realize that.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Well, it did work, but you don't see the results
right away, and so you have to be prepared to
think about it as a longer term investment than one
that's just going to all of a sudden start generating,
you know, money coming into the coffers, because it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Work that way.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I think the third thing is the talent, and that's
everything from having the right ad agency and the strategists
and the creative people and even the staff back in
your own organization to be able to think boldly but
also execute flawlessly and investing in those people was really important.
(23:05):
Something that I really haven't talked as much about, but
it's equally important is the authenticity of the campaign, because
you can't make this stuff up, or if you do,
you're telling the wrong story. And when you had parents
applauding the creative and people sort of openly weeping every
(23:32):
single you know, creative piece that we would put out
for them, it was genuine and authentic. And one of
the things we do with sick kids is we make
sure that every you know, piece of creative is tested
against sort of the parent reaction to it, which the
(23:52):
reality does because you know, the authentic the authenticity will
easily get exposed if you're not really telling the true
story out exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Another piece was don't create a campaign like this with
a shelf life for a couple of years, because you're
not going to get the full benefit of what it
can offer you. And I think that is you know,
that's been a key learning we're coming up on, you know,
(24:30):
several years of being able to having used Versus to
tell the narrative around let's build a new Sick Kids. Well,
now the next phase of iteration is trying to use
things like artificial intelligence and data analysis to get better
outcomes for kids. But Versus is still going to be
(24:52):
the platform by which we tell the story.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
And people move off platforms way too soon, dayDay too soon.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
And my point has been no, let's continue to use
the performance brand and the Versus if you will, iconography
and in being able to tell that story too. And
that's the brilliance of this campaign was that you can
go from one story to the next story to the
(25:20):
next story.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Well, listen to thank you for being bold, for being audacious,
and for being a great partner.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes, absolutely, it's been fantastic.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Thank you for this talk.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
My pleasure was.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Thank you for listening to partners and possibility. That was
my discussion with Ted Gerrard, former CEO of Sick Kids
and visionary of its hugely successful fundraising campaign. I hope
you've enjoyed our look back at this amazing campaign and
I look forward to seeing how Cassette and Sick Kids
continue to break fundraising barriers.
It transformed what was sort of always this handout help
us to this real position of we're winning the battle,
but it is still a battle and we want you
to join us. And that's why I loved it. It
was the boldness of what you could tell to the public,
(00:23):
but it was also the intimacy with which the campaign
could be driven at the individual level.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
In an ever changing world.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
That's all about stained connected, building connections and seeing where
the next collaboration takes a marketing campaign from an initial
brief to the follow through. What paths are going to
make a campaign success more than a possibility. Hi, I'm
Brett marchand CEO of Plus Company is Partner's and Possibility.
(01:00):
You may have heard about Sick Kids in Toronto. Today
we'll talk about the organization's huge fundraising targets and how
one simple idea forever changed the face of charity. Sickness
doesn't mean weakness. Joining me in this episode is Ted Gerard,
who has Sick Kids CEO, had the vision for the
Versus campaign and took a big risk with the bold
(01:20):
versus concept. We'll hear how he worked with Gassette to
make it the largest fundraiser in Canadian healthcare history, raising
one point seven.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Billion dollars in seven years.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We'll take a look back at where it all began,
the idea, origin, story, the objectives, and the risk.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Let's start maybe just some context, because we're talking about
sick kids obviously, and not everyone that listens to this
understands some of the nuances of running a hospital foundation,
because there's a hospital board and then there's a foundation
that raises all the money, right, and so maybe just
tell us a little bit about how that works in
your role, and then we'll drive into the campaign.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So the hospital was founded in eighteen seventy five, which
makes it one of the oldest children's hospitals in the world.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And it was.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Around that time when Dickens was in fact raising money
for Ormond Street Children's Hospital, which is the oldest children's
hospital in the world, that people began to realize that
you had to treat kids differently than you treat adults.
And essentially the hospital managed to eke its existence out
(02:32):
of private philanthropy in the community and the odd government grant.
And then it was really in the nineteen seventies when
foundations were carved away from the hospitals in order to
do two things. Number One, to make sure that any
monies that were raised from donors were kept separate from
(02:55):
government money i e. No scoop and take some of
that money away from from them. But secondly, to really
allow for focus on philanthropy and you know, leave the
heart surgery to the cardiac surgeons and leave the professional
(03:15):
fundraising and voluntarism to the people who do it as
a professional, as an advocation. And that's really the history
of the Kids. It was founded in nineteen seventy two
with two employees raising about a million bucks in the community.
And you know, over the period of time we have
(03:38):
grown to be one of the largest foundations in the
world dedicated to children's health, certainly the largest in Canada.
And I've had the privilege of overseeing the evolution of
the organization for the last fourteen years.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
You joined in two thousand and nine, it did it
was an interesting time to get a new job, by
the way, on the of the financial crisis, and when
did the discussion start to happen about a new campaign
and building the new hospital.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well it was really Most people don't realize this, but
it was a very planned evolution of the Kids campus
starting with a brand new research facility. Because our researchers
were scattered in different buildings in downtown Toronto. We built
(04:30):
the world's largest children's health research facility on Bay Street,
named in honor of a great gift from Peter Gilgan.
That was then the catalyst to move to the second phase,
which was building a new twenty eight story what we
(04:54):
call patient support center, which was to house all of
the executive and administrative and back end functions of the hospital,
and that would then further decant a number of people
who were working in the oldest part of the hospital.
And now we're at the stage of being in a
(05:16):
position to tear down the oldest part of sic Kids
and to rebuild it from scratch, to take what has
always been an aspiration of not just being the best
from a delivery of care model, but the best from
a physical facility model. And so people told me at
(05:39):
the outset, by the way, we have this grand vision,
now go execute against it. And I realized that I
loved the vision, but the execution was going to take
a fundamental change to have. The foundation had been doing
its business over the you know, the past decade, and
(06:02):
so undaunted by the challenge.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
We got started, and when you entered into the new
campaign I think was twenty sixteen or at least, I
mean that's when Verses came out. But obviously you even
though you hadn't announced at that point you were to
build a new hospital, you knew that was coming. What
was the target, what were you tried to raise?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, originally we had set a target of a billion dollars,
which would at the time have made it the largest
ever healthcare fundraising campaign in Canadian history. But is campaigns,
you know, come and go. The goal then got raised
to one point three billion, and then one point five billion,
(06:42):
and ultimately we closed the campaign on March thirty first
with one point seven billion dollars raised, which still makes
it the largest campaign for healthcare ever done in this
country and actually one of the most substantial campaig ever
done in the world for children's health specifically.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So yeah, that was to be very proud.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
By the way, it was proud, and I had my
sort of for me personally, part of the vision was
Sick Kids is very much one of those revered public
institutions in our city. As Jordan Bitov reminds me, he said,
there's two iconic brands in Toronto. One is the Toronto
may Beliefs and the other is the hospital. Post World War.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Two, when.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know, the troops were coming back home and Toronto
was home to maybe half a million people. Eighty five
thousand people out of a population about half a million
lined up to take a tour of Sick Kids on
the day that it opened. And it said to me
that there was something about the pride that the community
(07:54):
felt towards Sick Kids that I wanted to emulate in
this campaign, both in terms of it success but really
rallying the community around this cause.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
You definitely did that, by the way.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So we've heard about how it all began at Sick
Kids and the high targets that Ted and Sick Kids
set for this campaign. It was a pretty bold move
for the hospital, but let's hear more about the challenges
it faced to get buy in for this campaign. I mean,
you were there for seven years before we started the
new Versus campaign, and you've done some great advertising, by
(08:32):
the way. I mean, yeah, I think you know, Sick
Kids was well known for a place that did great advertising,
but you had a i mean, obviously a new challenge having.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
To raise that kind of money and billion to start
and you know, ended up at one point set a billion.
What else was challenging about the campaign?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Why?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Like, why did you come seek a sad what? You know?
What was the what? What was in your mind?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Well, there's something that our former VP of Brand Strategy
and Communications, Laurie Davison, always said, which was that there
was a sea of saneness to what everybody else was
doing and we were probably no different than that. Great campaigns,
but were they any different than so many others? And
(09:19):
if we really did want to emulate this sort of
pride in community, we needed to find a way of
engaging with new population groups and people who had never
thought about supporting sick kids in the past, and to
really be bold in the way in which we talked
about sick kids, because the vision was bold, and you know,
(09:41):
the way in which you tell your story has to
sort of match up with the sort of the boldness
of the vision. And that's when we said, you know what, pause, reset,
Let's do an RFP. Let's have a bunch of different
agencies come in and tell us how they might transform
(10:01):
the way in which we were branding and talking about ourselves.
And that led us to Cassette and the start of
what's been a phenomenal partnership.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Over the years. Yeah, seven years. I remember well by
the way I was. You know, we're here in the
in the in the offices in Toronto, and I think
it was both you and Laury came in to see
the original we did which I saw. I hate to
admit it, but only a few hours before you guys
did that, and I remember thinking, this is amazing, this
is this is transformative. I hope they have the guts
(10:36):
to do it, and you had the guts to do it.
So tell me, tell me how you felt when you
first saw it, when you first saw the idea of versus.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What I loved about the Versus campaign was the resiliency
of it in that it could be a rallying cry
for the community, but that you could take it down
to the lowest common denominator and make it a personal
story as well. So you know, I had my own
battle statement, which was, you know, Ted versus apathy, because
(11:09):
it drives me crazy that people who you know, should
probably be supporting charity aren't. So that was my battle statement,
but it became doctor Caplan's battle against neuroblastoma. It became
Jack's challenge against Hodgkins lymphoma, So there was an ability
(11:31):
to take it right down to the individual level. And
the other thing that it did is that it transformed
what was sort of always this handout help us to
this real position of we're winning the battle, but it
(11:52):
is still a battle, and we want you to join
us in this. And one of the ways you could
join us is by declaring much your own verses is
is and really trying to sell the story of what
we were trying to achieve as the kids. And that's
why I loved it. It was the boldness of what
(12:14):
you could tell to the public, but it was also
the intimacy with which the campaign could be driven at
the individual level.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And back to the earlier thing that you said and
that Laurie said to you, which is, you know, it's
a sea of sameness and particularly true with children's charities
and even children's hospitals, which is, it's all about children
being victims and or they need our help, and yeah,
you know, and this really did it in a completely
different way, right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, a different way. And you know, it was not
just always telling the story of the happy child that
was survived their diagnosis and was also prepared to take
on some of the very tough stories about a child
child to who you know, for instance, twenty percent of
(13:03):
kids still don't overcome a cancer diagnosis, and it was
you know, saying, well, let's tell you about grace, and
Grace was one of the twenty percent and you know,
we still have.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Work to do.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And it wasn't being afraid of shying away from those
tough stories as well. And interestingly enough, parents really got
behind this idea, parents of kids who were at sick kids,
because they had gone through their own personal struggles and
they wanted a way in which to celebrate and commemorate
(13:43):
the life of their kids.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Marxie were shot. All all the ads in the original ad,
I mean made a huge flash. I mean everyone was
talking about it. I mean, I've only made a couple
of campaigns or have been part of a couple of
campaigns in my life that have had that kind of
impact that that, and probably I am Canadian, like you know,
I mean just literally everyone was talking about it. But
it wasn't all positive at the very beginning, right like,
it had some controversy it did.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I mean, when you wake up the next morning after
having launched the campaign, and you see the headline in
the Globe and mail, Sick Kids Campaign misses the mark.
You have this sinking feeling in your gut that, oh God,
what have I done here? But you have to have
the courage of your convictions. And with Cassette's help, we
(14:29):
did a social audit of the reaction around the campaign,
and for every negative comment, there were over ten thousand
that were positive. And you know, usually that is the way.
You'll have a critic who writes a negative review and
doesn't mean you shut down the production, just as we
didn't shut down the campaign, and people were trying to
(14:52):
judge the campaign on the basis of one the first
time they saw it, as opposed to thinking about the
body of work that was to come and the stories
that we still had to tell. I had a mentor
who always taught me, have to have the courage to
rise above your principles. And in this case, you know,
you had the courage to move on and reassure people
(15:16):
like the board of directors and the hospital CEO that
the sky isn't falling. We didn't make a mistake here.
Let us prove it to you. And well, in the end,
I think we did.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I've never been thanked and applauded so much in my
whole career, and yet you're the well, I'm sure you've
got it all the accolades as well, which which are
so well deserved. I mean, and some other people actually
glombed onto it. I mean, it had that early criticism,
but that seemed to completely disappear early on. So talk
about some of the celebs who got behind it.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
They know, well, the one story that we featured on Grace,
who is one of the twenty percent of children who
didn't overcome her cancer diagnosis. It just so happens that
the family was friends with Hailey Wickenheiser, who you know,
national celebrity sports celebrity, Yeah, captain of the women's hockey
(16:15):
team and a wonderfully decent person who was training to
be a doctor actually herself. And it just so happens
that Haley was best friends with Ryan Reynolds, and Ryan
saw the work and he all of a sudden said,
tell me how I can help. You know, every time
we would put a new ad out there, Ryan would
(16:36):
be sending it to his network. And it wasn't before long.
I was getting donations in from places like Iceland and
Korea and you know, French Polynesia. And you know, was
it because of Sick Kids. Maybe not the institution, but
it was because the work was speaking so passionately to
(17:00):
the people who were watching it, and I think that
they were taken by the cause of children's health.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
We're going to take a quick break and when we
come back, we'll talk about how Sick Kids measured success
in this campaign and how it kept moving its objectives
higher and higher. Welcome back to Partners and Possibility. I'm
(17:35):
Brett Marshaun. Sick Kids Versus was clearly a huge success,
and Ted will share his key learnings.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Listen. It was copied a lot, and a lot of
other people have tried to do something similar, not to
the same effect. Obviously, it's won lots of awards internationally,
as you know, can I mean won everything, and I
think in many ways it's actually fundamentally changed people's point
of view about how to do great cause advertised. Yes,
you should be very proud of but I think the
numbers are the most impressive. Right. So you were telling
(18:05):
me earlier about sort of pre campaign, post campaign, what
the sort of run.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Rate was well, we were raising about eighty million dollars
a year when I arrived, and now it's well over
two hundred million dollars an hour. We had a couple
of one hundred thousand of donors who would give to
us each year. Now it's three hundred and thirty thousand donors.
(18:31):
And this all is because the profile of sick kids
was elevated through this process, but also the cause of
children's health was elevated, and I think that was really important.
And we've used the campaign to really reach new audiences
(18:52):
that we had not reached before. Our core demographic has
always been and women, and we needed to figure out
ways to reach the millennials of the world, the grandparents
who figure, I've done all my parenting, I don't need
to think about supporting sick kids, the new communities that
(19:16):
exist in a very diverse, multicultural country who may never
have thought about giving to a hospital before because it
was just was never part of their experience. And that's
why the tonality of the campaign was also important, because
(19:37):
we knew that, you know, if we're going to hit
the gamer community, you got to be telling the story
in a way that they're going to sort of get
there was more strategy that people probably don't realize that
went into the design of the campaign to reach audiences
and to tell the story from a different perspect than
(20:02):
just simply creating good ads. Right. By the way, this
is another part of the strategy that we did is
I credit Laurie Davison for all of this. Was making
a story out of the story. So trying to take
(20:22):
the campaign because we're a charity after all at the
end of the day, and we don't have you know,
McDonald's or Cheeto's budgets to spend on being able to
buy ad time. So what we did was involve the
(20:42):
different columnists and reporters in being able to talk about
the transformation, why we were doing it, what we hope
to achieve, et cetera, and then using their coverage of
the new campaign as a way to amplify what we
could buy. And all that earned media was huge.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So and it builds on itself, right because once you
get earned somebody talks about it, then they want to
see it, then they talk to other people about that. Well,
let's talk about what I mean. You've made one of
the great campaigns in Canadian history, if not in charity history. Honestly,
what would you tell somebody who's in your shoes eight
(21:28):
years ago or fourteen years ago, what advice would you
give them to do the same kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Well, number one, it's not being afraid to be bold.
I think you have to get outside of the typical
charity narrative, which is the sort of the handout, and
help us into really telling a compelling and somewhat edgy story. Secondly,
(21:57):
you've got to be prepared to invest, and I do
give our board full credit in that they were prepared
to invest in this campaign in a way that many
charity boards are not prepared to make the investment, and of.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Whom because they don't think marketing works or correct and
which I don't know how you don't look at your
campaign and realize that.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Well, it did work, but you don't see the results
right away, and so you have to be prepared to
think about it as a longer term investment than one
that's just going to all of a sudden start generating,
you know, money coming into the coffers, because it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Work that way.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I think the third thing is the talent, and that's
everything from having the right ad agency and the strategists
and the creative people and even the staff back in
your own organization to be able to think boldly but
also execute flawlessly and investing in those people was really important.
(23:05):
Something that I really haven't talked as much about, but
it's equally important is the authenticity of the campaign, because
you can't make this stuff up, or if you do,
you're telling the wrong story. And when you had parents
applauding the creative and people sort of openly weeping every
(23:32):
single you know, creative piece that we would put out
for them, it was genuine and authentic. And one of
the things we do with sick kids is we make
sure that every you know, piece of creative is tested
against sort of the parent reaction to it, which the
(23:52):
reality does because you know, the authentic the authenticity will
easily get exposed if you're not really telling the true
story out exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Another piece was don't create a campaign like this with
a shelf life for a couple of years, because you're
not going to get the full benefit of what it
can offer you. And I think that is you know,
that's been a key learning we're coming up on, you know,
(24:30):
several years of being able to having used Versus to
tell the narrative around let's build a new Sick Kids. Well,
now the next phase of iteration is trying to use
things like artificial intelligence and data analysis to get better
outcomes for kids. But Versus is still going to be
(24:52):
the platform by which we tell the story.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
And people move off platforms way too soon, dayDay too soon.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
And my point has been no, let's continue to use
the performance brand and the Versus if you will, iconography
and in being able to tell that story too. And
that's the brilliance of this campaign was that you can
go from one story to the next story to the
(25:20):
next story.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Well, listen to thank you for being bold, for being audacious,
and for being a great partner.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes, absolutely, it's been fantastic.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Thank you for this talk.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
My pleasure was.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Thank you for listening to partners and possibility. That was
my discussion with Ted Gerrard, former CEO of Sick Kids
and visionary of its hugely successful fundraising campaign. I hope
you've enjoyed our look back at this amazing campaign and
I look forward to seeing how Cassette and Sick Kids
continue to break fundraising barriers.
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