Faced with our collective vulnerability and our growing isolation from each other, it is time to celebrate a common thread and the hope that we can all find strength in our softness.

We all bleed, we all have had snot drip down on us, we all have barfed, or been barfed on, we are all messy and, yes, we all have to use the toilet. It’s these realities that unite us all. That’s what make us beautiful. It’s these moments that we are in service of. Now is the time to unapologetically celebrate our humanity.

We transformed a category built on shame and avoidance to raw, honest and celebratory of humanity, simply by speaking to the actual uses of the products in an epic ballet of striking imagery paced to a raspy acoustic version of ‘Human’ by the UK’s Rag‘n’Bone Man.

Toilet paper shortages defined the start of the pandemic. What caused the rush to toilet paper was an unparalleled sense of collective vulnerability. Our greatest fears existed in protecting our human dignity by keeping ourselves clean. We could alleviate these fears by celebrating the beauty of the functions and fluids that ultimately define our humanity in a way that paper products never have in the past.

Unapologetically Human was briefed to communicate “Made in Canada” to calm consumers nerves on supply. But we had to determine what it means to be Canadian. The answer exists in the fact that Canada is known as having soft power. We do not have the economic or military weight to influence, but we wield influence on a social level.

Strength in softness triangulated being Canadian, the attributes of all 4 products, and the reassurance that strength could be found in our collective human vulnerabilities.