In 2016, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, or SickKids

as it’s affectionately known, was named the #1 pediatric hospital in the world.

However, this national treasure is housed in a failing building. Clinical spaces are cramped and inefficient. State-of-the-art modern equipment is too big to fit through door frames, so it must be constantly broken down and reassembled for patient needs. SickKids desperately requires a new home.

While the hospital receives 2/3 of its funding from the government, the rest comes from donations. So SickKids set an audacious goal: to raise $1.5 billion in donations across five years.

After six years of rallying to raise funds for the new SickKids hospital, this was our most successful campaign ever. We acquired $74,576,000 in total campaign donations. We also achieved the highest number of monthly donors since we launched our fundraising goal—totaling a lifetime value of $13,158,180. The success of this campaign put us on track to significantly surpass our goal of raising $1.5 billion by March 2023 to build an epic new SickKids.

10.6K new monthly donors, +51% above plan

$13M est. the total lifetime value of monthly donations

$75M in total campaign donations

The challenge was to raise $1.5bn in funding in an environment of declining giving and a crowded donation space. Aside from the big annual campaigns associated with diseases like cancer, heart and stroke, diabetes, and mental health, SickKids competes for attention with the hospitals across the street, across the country, and against all the charities in the Greater Toronto region.

Historically its donations came from the same aging female donors. SickKids had to inspire younger male donors to get off the bench and join the fight.

To appeal to millennial males and younger donors, we needed a narrative that would dramatically differentiate it in a space full of the same kinds of appeals pushing all the same emotional buttons. SickKids would need to find a way for the brand to stop acting and look like a charity.

Children’s charities had long lived in pity and despair, with a prevailing narrative of sadness and vulnerability.

Yet the reality looked nothing like this.

We spent months at SickKids, interviewing patients, their families, doctors, and nurses. Our breakthrough moment came from speaking to a SickKids nurse who shared how patients often visualize their bodies attacking their illness, describing fights on a battlefield. Then it struck us, everyone at SickKids (the doctors, nurses, patients, and families) is fighting to win.

SickKids didn’t need people feeling sorry for them; they needed people to cheer them on. We researched brands that have heroic performance – like Nike and Under Armour. They appeal to everyone’s desire to win by dramatizing what it takes to overcome insurmountable odds. This breakthrough insight would inform the entire creative platform: don’t act like a charity; act like a champion.

Thinking like a performance brand meant dressing like one - SickKids needed to show up more like Nike than a typical charity brand.

The creative idea can be summed up in two letters: VS.

When you see “VS,” you know you are about to witness a battle – on the playing field, on the battlefield - or in an operating room. A neon logo was created and used on every single element of the campaign.

The campaign redefined the word “sick” by focusing on the fierce fighting spirit and will to win that children with severe illness possess. It reframed SickKids as a champion instead of a charity with an unrelenting goal – to fight until every kid is a healthy kid. This dramatically shifted perception from a “cause” brand to a “performance” brand.

• The fundraising target of $1.5bn was achieved a year ahead of schedule.

• The compound growth rate in income from launch in FY17 to FY22 has been 8.7%, almost 6 times what

it was in FY16 against a background of declining giving and Covid-created fundraising limitations.

• Unaided Awareness of SickKids has grown strongly with broadly-based growth. Those groups

least aware in FY17 (18-34s, Men and those without kids) all more than doubled their Unaided

Awareness, making then the most aware groups

• From a position of parity on Unaided Awareness in FY17, SickKids has left nine percentage points behind its closest competitor.

• there are now 44% more monthly donors than pre-VS.

• the $99.9m media investment has repaid itself 3.56 times, driving $355m in donations (a ROMI

of 2.56)

The simplicity of VS allowed us to flex storytelling to different perspectives - from the child to

their parents, doctors, nurses, and the adult they become, all the way through to influencers

including sporting heroes and celebrities.

Communications were designed to ignite emotional interest and drive conversion. This was critical in ensuring every short-term campaign built long-term brand momentum - a rich and evolving narrative that has successfully grown our donor base year after year.

Toronto is Canada’s largest, most dynamic city. It is a magnet for the ambitious and the competitive. It is also home to major league teams: the Maple Leafs (NHL), the Blue Jays (MLB), the Raptors (NBA), the Toronto FC (MLS), and the Argonauts (CFL). As a city of diehard sports fans and career-oriented go-getters, the meaning and metaphor of “VS” is something every Canadian could relate to.