Why SickKids applied ‘a fresh set of eyes’ to ‘VS.’

SickKids is evolving its “VS.” brand platform to reflect focus on communicating its precision child health (PCH) model.

Launched last week, the campaign’s hero spot, set to Billie Eilish’s “Everything I Wanted,” depicts the predictive aspects of medicine, telling the story of a youth’s hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and how things could have turned out had an early intervention not occurred. The campaign is anchored by a film rooted in truth and tragedy, but also hope, inspired by a SickKids patient named Nathan who had the same heart condition.

After several years of – successfully – using “VS.” to raise the $1.7 billion needed to build a new SickKids hospital, it was time to adopt a new approach to fit with what will define the hospital going into the future.

“We knew we needed a fresh look, a fresh approach and a and a fresh set of eyes and perspective,” Kate Torrance, VP and head of brand at the SickKids Foundation, who credits the work of longtime director and collaborator, Mark Zibert, who gave his blessing for this creative departure. “We decided to pitch the job on a global scale, in order to ensure we had access to the best in the world to help bring this to life.” While Cossette remains the creative agency on the campaign, the global search led to Henry Scholfield in the U.K., with a spot that employs AI and new visual effects technology.

Torrance tells strategy that SickKids has been moving to a PCH model of care for quite a while, and that it needed to be able to explain, in a simple way, what exactly is changing with PCH, which began work two years ago.

The institution deployed semiotics studies, cultural and competitive research, and strategy focus groups to understand how deep it could go when talking about the AI and genomics used in a PCH model, and what “the sweet spot” was in terms of people being intrigued, but not confused, by futuristic medicine.

Ultimately, innovations in childcare medicine are all about the benefits to families. SickKids distilled it down to three pillars: the sooner you have a diagnosis, the better, even if it’s not good news; treat smarter, knowing “everything we can about that individual child”; and what can be learned through big data and genetic testing to see patterns and intervene.

That’s the basis of its new spot. It’s built around the idea of talking about what was, but also what can be, through innovation and technology.

The “VS.” platform was characterized by its high-impact imagery inspired by performance and athletic brands, be it the patients who never gave up their fight, the groups that organized to raise funds or the parents and healthcare workers that persevere through the tough days of treatment. But Torrance says it is flexible platform, malleable enough to accommodate whatever the hospital wants to highlight, likening it to Nike’s “Just Do It” in terms of its utility and ability to be constantly reinvented for different audiences.

The “Heal the Future” campaign roll-out includes high-impact OOH, including Toronto-focused dominations at Yonge Dundas Square, Union Station, a TTC subway train and Billy Bishop Airport.

SickKids has been surprised by how well Billy Bishop has performed in the past. It has ambassadors on site, and talks to captive audiences about its community and global impact.

“We get a lot of American donors,” Torrance says, and airport placements continue to do really well to reach this segment. Torrance says that while its investment en masse is focused locally, it has  a number of prominent donors abroad. Newsweek recently ranked SickKids as the second-best pediatric hospital in the world, what Torrance attributes to the reach of the institute’s research, and which has helped draw donors.

“We are getting eyeballs from around the globe, and some of those people are moved to support us,” she says. “We have ambition to grow our global awareness. We’ve gone a little bit bigger than we usually do, so we’ve invested a little bit more, and we’ve also leaned on our media partner OMD and media vendors to give us as much bonus as we can. For every dollar we might spend, we get $3 back in value.”

According to Torrance, it’s important for donors to know that what it spends on fundraising campaign is a very small percentage of what it ends up drawing in fundraising revenue.

Torrance tells strategy it has some “incredible” cinema placements, and SickKids’ longform playing at every Cineplex theatre in Toronto for the opening of Taylor Swift’s new movie. There is also a full TTC subway train domination, a grassroots way of showing patient stories.