SickKids House of Legends

The challenges and goals

In 2016, the Sick Kids Foundation launched the largest fundraising goal in Canadian healthcare history to raise $1.5 billion to build a new hospital. Despite its enormous success, by 2022, the campaign was still short of 7k monthly donors to reach its audacious goal, and this was our final chance to meet it. We also needed to attract donors who could donate a higher amount, as even a slight increase can significantly impact their overall lifetime value.

But there were many obstacles. After six years, our message had lost its novelty. Campaign fatigue had set in. The pandemic has made Canadians less financially secure, with 1 in 4 reporting that they expected to give less in 2022. And the post-pandemic economic headwinds of the war in Ukraine and high inflation resulted in compassion fatigue.

To overcome these challenges, we desperately needed to reinvigorate a campaign reimagining how healthcare is given in this country. It was a fundraising masterpiece that needed a stunning grand finale.

The insights and strategy

Since the launch of our fundraising campaign, we have intended to show how powerful SickKids indeed was. For six years, we showed Ontarians that SickKids was fighting the battle against childhood illness and that they were winning. We showed that the fight took grit, guts, and determination to stare down the disease and that everyone at SickKids had these characteristics. Nonetheless, there were still people who remained unmoved to join us.

So, we chose to revitalize the emotional connection by doubling down on SickKids' history of success and spotlighting the power of those within the hospital's walls from day one.

Culturally, we knew Ontario had seen its fair share of legends, from sports stars to renowned authors to globally recognized artists. But what about the child on her 15th round of chemotherapy? Or the researcher who spent sleepless nights trying to find a cure? Or the caregivers providing love to those during their darkest days? These were the true legends, and SickKids had been home to them for nearly 150 years.

Talk to any patient, doctor, nurse, or researcher at SickKids, and you'll hear countless stories of overcoming insurmountable odds and defying the impossible. SickKids was much more than a hospital; it was a House of Legends. And that called for an epic new hospital worthy of those legends. To rally Ontarians to join us, we needed to challenge their definition of a legend.

The execution

The critical component of House of Legends was a video celebrating the hospital's work, its history, and the legendary status of the staff, patients, and their families.

The video opened with the vision that Elizabeth McMaster led for the original 1875 hospital and transitioned into the idea of today and what's to come. We leveraged the initial launch by bringing back patients who starred in a video from 2016 and showcased home footage of patients featured over the years. We also made hospital workers central to the work for the first time.

We blitzed Barrie/Simcoe County with localized creative that spotlighted absolute, local SickKids patient legends. We utilized limited-time match promotions to drive conversions across Digital and Social. We took over Billy Bishop Airport in Downtown Toronto, where we told legendary stories and operated urgent, tangible calls-to-action ("We Need 100 Monthly Donors Today") to incentivize monthly donor sign-ups. We also used CRM programs to involve our existing donor communities and encourage donation upgrades.

To drive mass awareness, we utilized Broadcast TV (30-second video), OOH (Billboards and Transit Shelter Advertising, Print, OLV (60- and 30-second on YouTube), an experiential activation at Billy Bishop Airport, and solidified a partnership with Cineplex to air our 60-second video. To cultivate consideration, we utilized Digital and Social (Static, 15-second video) and used these channels for conversion via retargeting (6-second OLV).

The results and impact

Our final fundraising push was exceptionally successful, sending us well over our $1.5B

Target to $1.67B.  

• 10.6K monthly donors recruited, +51% above goal

• $2M in one-time donations

• $74,576,000 in total campaign donations

• ROI of 248%

• 57% unaided awareness (+3% YOY), 36% above the nearest competitor

• 65% awareness of the need for a new hospital building, up 9% YOY and + 8%

• pre and post-campaign.

Through these legendary stories, we overcame both campaign and compassion fatigue. What looked like it was going to be the most difficult challenge of all turned out to be the most successful campaign since the launch of VS.