It’s no wonder Lg2 is making its AOY debut this year, considering its recent accomplishments. This past year it experienced double-digit growth and was the ninth most awarded agency in Canada, including two CASSIES, five shortlisted campaigns at Cannes and 29 Creas including the Grand Crea for its work with the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux. It welcomed 10 new clients including Moosehead Breweries and Jacob. The agency’s rise to the top has no doubt just begun.
New Brunswick offers warm water
When it comes to summer vacations, Quebecers are surrounded by a sea of choices, and in 2009 the economy favoured stay-at-home vacations and all-inclusive southern travel. Tourism and Parks New Brunswick had to draw attention east, and convince Quebecers to drive an extra six hours to its beaches, double the driving time to Maine’s coast.
The campaign was built around the insight that vacationers are looking for beaches – and warm saltwater is a key ingredient to enjoying a better vacation. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, New Brunswick has the warmest saltwater beaches north of Virginia.
Three TV executions showed gorgeous New Brunswick beaches and demonstrated the warmth of their water using weather-channel-like iconography. An iTV on-demand component allowed viewers to watch a long-form promotional video. Billboards in Montreal featured a pool-ladder-equipped beach inviting commuters to dive in. Online, keywords and web banners demonstrating the warm water benefit were deployed on major portals, tourism verticals and search engines. Finally, radio executions used a warm Acadian accent, and a promotion drove consumers to Eauchaude.ca (Warmwater.ca), giving them the chance to win a NB vacation.
The campaign scored 83% in advertising recall, and helped New Brunswick rank number one in terms of warm water brand association amongst all Canadian and New England destinations. Over 5,000 TV viewers watched the on-demand long-form video. The banner campaign redirected over 41,500 users to the microsite, and the keyword campaign redirected nearly 25,000 people. The microsite generated over 95,000 visitors, a 128% increase over the previous year, while 75,000 proceeded to the province’s official website. These users stayed an average 5:48 minutes on the microsite, viewed an average of 6.5 pages and posted over 2,500 experiences on their Facebook feeds.
Bell Canada grows a playoffs beard
The game of hockey is filled with rituals and superstitions: lucky shirt, favourite stick, winning breakfast plate, etc. But no superstition matches the popularity and the ubiquity of the playoffs beard. It’s a special one because fans can grow theirs, too. In essence, the playoffs beard ritual triggers a tribal affiliation amongst fans.
As an official sponsor of the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators, as well as partial owner of the Habs, it made sense for Bell to show support for its teams. Given the participatory nature of hockey and its playoffs beard ritual, seeding it to social media communities made sense.
A Facebook application was created that let fans grow a 14-day beard in just 14 seconds. On the microsite, fans were asked to upload their picture, select a beard from a variety of styles, lengths and colours and then pick their team – Canadiens or Senators. The application quickly gained in popularity through blog feeds, online and traditional PR, and strategic social media seeding. The phenomenon was ignited by 40 key influencers, including artists, journalists, hockey fans and social connectors. 
Bell further engaged fans on the application’s Facebook fan page, a hub where they could share their passion (and facial hair) with peers.
Spurred on by Lg2’s community management team, fans were posting daily comments on all things hockey. The interaction went far beyond Bell’s expectations: during Game 7 of the first-round series between Montreal and Washington, the number of comments posted on the Playoffs Beard Facebook page exceeded the number of comments posted on the Montreal Canadiens official website, one of the most visited in the NHL.
In less than 20 days, 152,664 beards were created, and 237,701 fans interacted with the app and fan page, writing thousands of posts daily. The program generated 59% in brand attribution according to a post-playoff survey, a tremendous result given the overly cluttered social media space.
Arctic Gardens goes great with meat
Despite being Canada’s largest frozen vegetable processor, Arctic Gardens only had a 7% share in Ontario, the largest market, where Green Giant dominates.
The Arctic Gardens campaign had to differentiate it from the competition in a market where the brand is relatively unknown and where the media landscape is cluttered, and also where there’s low consumer engagement in the category and high price sensitivity.
The campaign appealed to urban moms to reach the target: kids and dads. The target was the type to only empty one side of their plate – the meaty side. Some would go out of their way to avoid having their meat even touch vegetables.
So the message concept was: Arctic Gardens goes great with meat. TV built on the insight and tells meat-lovers that Arctic Gardens vegetables are the best “sides” for their meals. A spot illustrated the tagline “Goes great with meat. The vegetables that make you love vegetables” in an exaggerated way: Arctic Gardens veggies are so good that even a yeti –the famed carnivore that loves meat more than anything – will go out of its way to have them at mealtime.
The results far exceeded expectations with 5% market share increase, and Ontario sales soared 49%. Brand awareness in Ontario increased 6%, from 40% to 46%, and the commercial won a Grand Crea award.
Canac makes hardware easy
The dominant hardware players in Quebec – The Home Depot, Rona, Réno-Dépôt and Lowes – all focus on the same promise: price and/or choice. In these supersized stores, consumers may potentially find everything they’re looking for but it may take them a while. What makes Canac unique is its physically smaller size. Tools and renovation items are faster to find, but most importantly, renovation solutions are made easier thanks to an unmatched quality of service: in-store training sessions for consumers, more personnel per square foot than in any other chain, prepackaged renovation kits, helpful lists of “what not to forget,” and so on.
This was the springboard to “Hardware made easy.” The creative approach illustrates how simple renovation projects are with Canac. Eighteen outside display boards were “constructed” close to stores, featuring items cut out of the wood of the billboards and assembled above them. Cheeky print ads featuring notes like “Gone to the corner store” written into the floor were published in local newspapers. Inside posters were also displayed at key locations.
The agency also recommended that the client, at that time called Canac-Marquis Grenier, should update its visual identity. Most customers already called the stores “Canac,” so the name change represented a natural evolution.
A double-digit sales increase was recorded this summer, which represents Canac’s biggest sales increase in its history. Two of the outside display executions, “Fence” and “Window Shutters,” made the shortlist in the billboard category at the Cannes Lions. The print campaign was also awarded four Creas and an Applied Arts award.
Quebec shows gamblers what they can lose
Excessive gamblers typically have trouble admitting their problem. Their usual response to messages on the risks of gambling is to say “They’re not talking about me.” What’s more, the onslaught of ads for lotteries and games of chance make reaching at-risk gamblers and their families a tremendous challenge.
Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux du Québec (MSSS) needed to take a high-risk approach to generate as much awareness as possible, and connect people with help via a website and telephone hotline.
The message had to keep the target audience, obsessed with the idea of winning, from putting everything on the line. The big idea was inspired by the simple insight that the risk of losing everything speaks louder than winning.
The campaign developed around the line “You’ve got too much to lose.” It helped them become cognizant of the risks and made their families and friends aware of the possible lifelong consequences.
It launched simultaneously on TV, radio, print and online. The TV spot showed a man listing all his possessions and the things that were dear to him (his home, car, wife, kids, RRSPs for his golden years and more). In the next frame the viewer realizes he’s about to lose it all to gambling. It closed with the tagline “You’ve got too much to lose.”
The campaign earned the highest awareness rate of any MSSS campaign (81%) to date, bringing 3,384,790 users – or nearly 50% of the province’s population – to its site in just five weeks, and driving over 75,000 visits.
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Silver: Adrenaline & doubt fuel Taxi
Bronze: Welcome to the club, Sid Lee
Honourable mention: BBDO’s winning insights
