Get your tissues ready, the Air Canada Foundation has a new emotion-inducing online video that it hopes will educate Canadians about its work with charitable organizations.
The new “A Boy and 3 Gifts” short film, created by Montreal’s Marketel and Alt Productions, features Trent, an 11-year-old boy from Anahim Lake, B.C. being given a surprise trip across the country to meet Montreal Canadiens player Carey Price, who also hails from the community.
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The six-and-a-half minute film, which will run on the airline’s in-flight entertainment system and in shorter form as social media teasers, also features Trent taking some shots on the ice at Price, and later presenting him with cards made by kids at his school in Anahim Lake.
Price and his wife Angela recently became ambassadors for the Breakfast Club of Canada program, which is supported in part by the Air Canada Foundation. The video features Trent and his Anahim Lake classmates benefiting from the breakfast program.
The Air Canada Foundation wanted to showcase its partnerships, like with the Breakfast Club, using something other than a corporate video, says Marketel copywriter Jessie Sternthal, who worked on the piece with creative director Jo-Ann Munro.
“It was actually very organic,” Sternthal says of the process, noting that Price was on board right away.
She also notes that the length of the film hasn’t stopped people from viewing it and that the story seems to be compelling enough to make up for the longer-form.
“We were conscious that it was long, but we thought it was a story that needed to be told in six minutes,” she says. “If you tell a story that people are interested in hearing, they’ll give the time to it.”
