With its latest campaign, Surrey Hospitals Foundation is showing the impact of not having adequate healthcare services in one of British Columbia’s fastest-growing cities.

In the “Keep it in Surrey” spot, a patient is put into an ambulance and the camera pans out revealing the vehicle actually driving away as doctors look on in desperation.

“People are being driven away from Surrey to get healthcare out of the city, which is kind of crazy for a city this size,” says Chris Zawada, head of creative for Full Punch, the agency which came up with the campaign. It’s a bait and switch, Zawada explains, as there’s an expectation that patients in a healthcare ad would be driven to a hospital, not away from it.

Zawada tells strategy the campaign needs to draw awareness to the fact Surrey can’t currently deal with issues and challenges such as trauma care and heart attacks, and it is intentionally making viewers uncomfortable.

“Campaigns typically have smiley people and try to capture more of the end-benefit of donating,” he says. “People are not happy.”

It’s especially pressing now, as Surrey is a big city whose population is expected to eventually overtake Vancouver’s. And Surrey is the only city of its size in Canada without an emergency department funded to treat the three leading causes of sudden death: heart attack, stroke and trauma. Also, despite the city having the province’s highest birth rate, Surrey has only gained four new maternity beds over the past 21 years.

Zawada explains that the agency was in part inspired by Bernie Sanders’ fundraising campaigns that focus on getting everybody to give, rather than scoring one big fish. While some organizations have had a specific target, like head of household shoppers, it’s looking at everyone for “a buck here and there.”

Additional videos are currently in production along with print, OOH, digital and social that round out the campaign.

In April of 2020, Full Punch assisted the organization with a complete rebrand, visual identity and strategy, and that’s when it came up with the “unstoppable” positioning, which is also highlighted in this campaign. It subsequently did a brand campaign that was looking to attract new surgeons to its staff.

The media mix for this is meant to be attention-grabbing: aside from the video, it includes large public transit wraparounds highlighting the “unstoppable” empowerment positioning.

Media is handled by Langley BC’s Mediaology. With a relatively small buy, Zawada says it has to make the touchpoints that it has available work as hard as possible.