Hospitals Are Houses of Legends in Epic SickKids Ad Directed by Mark Zibert

SickKids Foundation has launched the House of Legends campaign. The patients, doctors, nurses, researchers, and all the other healthcare workers at SickKids are legendary - and SickKids is built on these legendary stories. Continuing to leverage the powerful VS brand platform that began with SickKids VS: Undeniable, this new campaign is the culmination of what was started back in October 2016 with the aim of rallying the community to donate to help build a new hospital. 

This year’s marketing campaign will be the last time that the Foundation will be publicly raising money for the new building, as they anticipate reaching their goal by March of 2023.  

“We launched the VS brand platform to anchor what has been the largest fundraising goal in Canadian healthcare history, and we’ve been working towards that one goal ever since- to build a new SickKids,” says Kate Torrance, vice president of brand strategy and communications at SickKids Foundation. “This year’s creative idea needed to represent the culmination of the journey we started in 2016. We needed a powerful concept that would shine a light not just on our incredible patients and staff, but also on the importance of the institution as a whole in our community. We wanted potential donors to be reminded of how precious SickKids is and be inspired to support the building of a new hospital.” 

The House of Legends campaign celebrates the legendary work of the hospital, its rich history, and the legendary status of the staff, patients and their families. SickKids brought back patients from the first VS film in Year 1, including Cole smashing the dialysis machine and Malachi roaring with the tiger, as well as showcasing personal photos and home movies of other patients featured over the years, many of whom have passed away, including the late Marlow, who laid down the very first brick in the SickKids VS: All In campaign.

Created in partnership with Cossette, the campaign concept honours SickKids legends by highlighting the past, present and future. The House of Legends film is like a title sequence, moving through statuesque moments in the hospital’s history. Alongside the footage beautifully captured and produced by Mark Zibert, we combined real archival footage, newspaper headlines and patient photography to bring out the true emotion, intensity and fearlessness behind each scene. Finally, at the end, we pan out and realise that all these moments in history are just a small part of a much larger story. 

“On top of celebrating these legendary stories, in a way, this campaign is a tribute to all those who have helped make SickKids the iconic brand it is today,” says Anthony Atkinson, executive creative director at Cossette. “A SickKids VS campaign is a massive effort from many people who pour their heart and soul into the work. We like to think of this as also being a celebration of all those legends who gave, and continue to give, so much to help SickKids succeed in its mission.” 

The film is the bookend to the SickKids VS: Undeniable campaign, which garnered worldwide awareness through awards, media attention, social buzz, and surpassed all fundraising and engagement goals. The House of Legends film goes back to the vision that Elizabeth McMaster and a group of young nurses had for the original hospital, founded in 1875, and now, what that vision looks like today, and what’s to come. But this campaign is by no means a finish line for SickKids. The institution relies heavily on donations to operate, and although the current fundraising campaign has been incredibly successful, the need for donations continues to grow. SickKids will keep on fighting the fight, as it’s always done, for every child. 

Through social and digital executions, SickKids is telling the legendary stories of these patients, doctors, nurses, and researchers to encourage Canadians to become recurring monthly donors. This year’s goal is to acquire 10,000 new monthly donors and all donations made before December 31st, 2022, will be triple-matched for an entire year. It’s time to build a new home worthy of these stories and all the ones yet to come.