The Scarborough Health Network Foundation (SHNF) is launching the second wave of its widely successful “Love, Scarborough” campaign, once again aiming to drive awareness and donations for the hospitals it represents.
This wave follows the initial launch of the campaign in January, which “saw massive success” and generated “real traction” within Toronto, says Jennifer Lee, director of marketing and communications for the SHNF. That’s especially true within Scarborough and surrounding neighbourhoods.
“It felt like a real movement amongst the community, staff and marketing industry. The uptake was enormous, and not just from the buzz perspective, which was our original goal,” she elaborates, pointing to local businesses such as Scarborough Spots, an apparel maker that manufactured “Love, Scarborough” hoodies and donated its profits to the foundation; as well as Lost Craft brewery, which brewed a limited-edition beer for the occasion.
While that initial burst of awareness was big for the organization – it saw a 30% lift on aided brand awareness and that helped to drive donations – it still has a $100-million goal to hit. “We’re playing a lot of catch up after many years of being left behind,” explains Lee. “At the end of the day, we were just getting started.”
“It’s critical that we stay in market and continue to drive awareness,” she adds, something that is especially true heading into the holiday season, when charitable giving typically has an uptick.
Hence the second wave. While the campaign is returning to radio and TV with the same cr
eative as it ran the first time out – including a mix of 60-, 30- and 15-second spots – fresh creative will also run across digital, print and OOH, the latter which has been “updated with new, bold lines that hopefully have stopping power,” says Lee, and features different faces from the Scarborough community.
“We’ve put some investment into digital and have some donated digital media as well. The volume is higher, and we have already seen within the past two weeks some great results: triple the traffic and double the online donations,” says Lee.
The new campaign is rolling out across many of the same channels as the previous wave, with the refreshed creative for OOH and print developed in house by SHNF staff, while the initial creative that is still in use was developed by Ogilvy. An array of media companies donated time or space for the campaign, including Rogers, Bell, Corus, Cineplex, MLSE and Pattison – it has received $3.5 million in donated mass media, Lee says.
“Through digital and social, we are trying to drill down a bit and talk more about how amazing our staff are. We have the talent, and now we have to get where they’re working up to par, because they’re in the oldest ORs in Ontario,” Lee says. “But the objective remains awareness, even as we talk more about the reason to believe and try to build trust in our hospitals.”
