​SickKids Hospital was being threatened by a crisis that was getting worse everyday: the critical need for a new building. Despite being a world renowned hospital and a beloved national institution, SickKids was having trouble rallying the remaining $400 million it desperately needed to upgrade its obsolete building. Without a renewed influx of donor support for a new building, SickKids would be unable to keep up with the scale of patients and the technology required to care for them. Once the Foundation noticed month-over-month declines in donations, we were engaged to rally the support of those who had not yet contributed to their cause. Our challenge was to "seed the need” amongst potential or lapsed donors, and establish a broad understanding of why SickKids urgently needs a new building.

SickKids Hospital had become a victim of its world-class reputation and marketing success. Primary research revealed that over 80% of our target audience assumed that SickKids was a state-of-the-art facility, and a well-funded organization. That’s a problem because donors want to maximize the impact of their donations and therefore they resonate with causes that are in urgent need of support. We discovered that our target donors didn’t rally behind the desperate need for a new hospital because the shiny image of SickKids was masking the cracks in the building’s infrastructure. Our insight: to “seed the need” we needed to establish the severity of the cause by closing the huge gap between the glossy perceptions of SickKids and the day-to-day reality of being a patient, family member, or staff in an archaic building. 

Given the extent of the gap between perception and reality, we knew that words would not be enough to get target donors to recognize the desperate need for a new SickKids hospital. It would require people to experience the need first hand. So we transformed a hospital boardroom into an exact replica of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and recreated the experience patients, family members, and staff live every day. 

Every detail was accounted for, including hand-written charts, worn tape on the floor, even the constant beeping of machines and whimpers of children. We conducted over 30 hours of stakeholder interviews for a true sense of the outdated infrastructure’s impact. With that content, we created an immersive, three-hour experience including a 100-track soundscape complimented with live reenactments featuring SickKids doctors, nurses, and voice recordings from real families, creating a truly authentic experience. 

Then we put it on Airbnb. The experience was made available to consumers through a listing that contained all of the same information as an ordinary listing while illustrating the two sides of the story: amazing quality of care despite the limitations of the space. The experience was valued at $16,744, the cost to operate a four-patient room in the PICU for one night, and was available to book on Airbnb.ca. Through the partnership, we leveraged the cache of Airbnb but used the platform as a means to drive a poignant, eye opening message - a brave departure from the traditional Airbnb tone and listings.

To catapult the conversation, notable Torontonians including NBA Champion Fred VanVleet checked in for the night and we captured their emotional reaction. Those who experienced the SickKids Airbnb first-hand immediately understood the need for a new hospital. We combined the interview content with real-time guest reactions to create powerful videos that dramatized the gap between the glossy perception of SickKids and the desperate reality of the hospital building.

Armed with powerful video content featuring tear jerking testimonials and local celebrity heroes, we entered the second phase of the program: to seed the need nationally. To drive mass awareness, we invited in national media outlets to experience the recreated PICU and interviewed hospital spokespeople on the daily infrastructure issues. The videos were then shared on owned channels and used to pitch to additional media outlets across the country. 

To date, the campaign has generated over 139 million earned traditional and social media impressions; over 250 pieces of coverage including coverage in North American outlets such as Newsweek, yahoo, MSN, CBC, CTV, Global News, CP24, Huffington Post; and over 26,000 visits to the Airbnb listing, the most viewed listing in Canada.

During the SickKids Airbnb campaign, SickKids Foundation saw a 28 percent increase in new users to its site, 25 percent increase in traffic/page views and most importantly, a 27 percent increase in donation revenue.