For the past two months, the Hospital for Sick Children has been rolling out a public art project to display the scope of 150 years of groundbreaking history.

Vibrant blue-balloon sculptures have been going up in notable areas in Toronto, across Canada and internationally as part of an “earned-first” campaign that will culminate with a large-scale event on June 7 at Nathan Phillips Square.

Citizen Relations developed and executed the project in partnership with the SickKids Foundation and the Hospital for Sick Children.

The first balloon was revealed on April 3, 150 years to the day after the first patient was admitted to the hospital.

Sandra Chiovitti, director of public relations at SickKids Foundation, tells strategy that the marketing team designed the campaign to sustain momentum and social engagement for its months-long run.

“A key component that informed our strategy was that the scale of our celebratory campaign should reflect the magnitude of the occasion,” Chiovitti says. “Our earned media and organic social strategies are at the heart of this campaign and truthfully, there are way more stories to tell than there are days in the calendar. So we’ve had to be really selective and intentional about which ones to highlight.”

The balloon campaign extends outside of the country with balloon installations reaching as far as England, Ghana, Jamaica and South Africa.

Chiovitti says the large footprint has led to hundreds of social shares that touch on stories of lifesaving heroism, as well as coincidental connections that have seen patients or their family members become SickKids staffers themselves.

“Many personal touching stories spoke to how SickKids saved their own, their child’s, their friend’s lives, which was so incredible to hear,” Chiovitti says. “Many stories focused on medical stories and so many of our staff and doctors received individual shoutouts, showcasing the incredible impact from the overall SickKids community.”

One sculpture, in Cobourg, Ont., highlights film star Ryan Reynolds and hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser’s meeting with young patient Grace Bowen in 2014. Reynolds was part of a recently approved proposal to rename the town’s hockey facilities to Grace Bowen Arena in the late child’s honour.

Citizen Relations CCO Josh Budd tells strategy that the project was a “massive undertaking.” He says the agency and SickKids teams spent months scouring archives on innovation, medical firsts, patient stories and famous moments before landing on their final 150 stories.

“We had a matrix of different types of stories we wanted to ensure we highlighted to ensure a balanced representation that would communicate the broadest story of impact possible,” Budd says. “Many, many of them mark a moment or event that happened right in that spot, years ago – like wayfinding pins around the globe to follow the story of SickKids’ impact for a century and a half.”

Budd says balloons felt like the correct visual cue owing to their ability to instantly convey significance and celebration and because they could create a broad enough canvas to tell a diverse set of stories.

“Simplicity and consistency were the goals. Balloons are iconic and language agnostic, requiring no explanation,” he says. “We wanted the public to feel like each piece was part of a broader whole, like one giant balloon bouquet untangled and spread across the globe, and naturally understand the gravity of this moment for the brand.”

The SickKids Foundation’s broader integrated marketing campaign is the non-profit’s key brand activation of the year. April’s release of brand film “The Count” marked FCB Canada’s first work on the acclaimed “VS” platform since becoming the SickKids Foundation’s AOR last September.