How Scarborough Health Network Does More with Less
In Canada, despite healthcare being free, not all services and hospitals are funded equally. Case and point, the Scarborough Health Network (SHN), which, despite facing inequities in resource allocation, still manages to put out top quality care for all of its patients. It’s a testament to the care of everyone involved, and how significant obstacles aren’t enough to stop the staff from doing their jobs to the highest level they possibly can.
However, it shouldn’t have to be this way. And to this end, SHN partnered up with Lifelong Crush to continue its ‘Love, Scarborough’ campaign, to celebrate not only how its staff do more with less, but also capture the spirit of Scarborough as a whole. Featuring powerful visual metaphors to demonstrate this in a fantastic but clear way, the two minute spot is grittier than its predecessor, but still serves to capture the community’s diversity, spirit and heart, and why it’s important to imagine just how great SHN could be when it's already doing as well as it is, with as few resources as it’s getting.
To discuss what it took to bring this to life, LBB’s Josh Neufeldt sits down with Lifelong Crush chief creative officer Derek Blais, and SNH associate vice president of marketing and communications, Jennifer Lee, for a chat.
LBB> How did you get started with this campaign? What was the brief, and what immediate ideas came to mind?
Jennifer> The brief was to pivot the ‘Love, Scarborough’ platform from talking about the shortcomings of our support and funding to highlighting the determination, perseverance and grit of our community. Lifelong Crush shares in those values as an agency. It’s scrappy, it has grit, and the team has personal connections to Toronto and Scarborough. You can really see that they put their heart and soul into the campaign.
Derek> We started with community engagement. Our strategy team did a ton of research at the onset of the campaign, talking with members of SHN and members of the community as a whole – what makes them tick, how the community feels, what it needs and representing Scarborough as the most diverse community in the world (according to the UN). With over half the population born outside of Canada, we wanted to be authentically diverse and show the resilience and strength of the community while balancing the need for funds to upgrade SHN’s facilities. Scarborough accounts for 25% of Toronto’s population, yet receives less than 1% of the hospital donations. Our inspiration came directly from the community.
LBB> What made now the right time to pivot ‘Love, Scarborough’, and why was a grittier tone the right creative approach?
Jennifer> The first chapter brought awareness to the stark healthcare inequities faced in Scarborough. The campaign garnered a lot of attention from the community, local government officials, downtown Toronto donors and beyond, including the marketing industry. In combination with the commitment from the government to invest in our hospitals and historic donations, we had a very successful couple of years. However, we are playing catch up in a major way. This is only the beginning of what is needed to help catch us from decades of being left behind. The time was right because it was necessary to continue to build that momentum of awareness of SHN and, at the same time, evolve our story to reflect the change; change in having seen some success, and change is showcasing our potential future.
Derek> Year one did an amazing job of bringing awareness to the need. It was a love letter to Toronto to wake up and pay attention. So, after listening to the community, we decided to move away from a love letter and more into a grittier portrait of the hospitals and the tenacity of the community. We were moving away from ‘help us’ to ‘join us’ and the word ‘grit’ is something we kept coming back to; it’s the only way to describe the energy and resilience of Scarborough. When you don’t have all the resources you need, you need to make it work – and the people of SHN and the community make it work and more. We took it from a sign off, ‘Love, Scarborough’, to ‘Hey Toronto, you should love Scarborough for how resilient it is’.
LBB> Tell us about the writing process! How did you work to balance the main message with an artistic feel and aesthetic?
Derek> The main message and the artistic feel go hand-in-hand. It’s authentic. It’s gritty. It’s urban. It’s confident. It has soul. We wanted to show the strength of the hospital staff and the extraordinary abilities that enable them to do so much with so little. We bent reality to make that point come across, but wanted to stay away from framing them as ‘superheroes’ which we’ve seen before in hospital campaigns. It was a balance.
LBB> Another key aspect is the way the work really captures the spirit of Scarborough. Why was this so important to the campaign? And from a technical standpoint, how did you approach this?
Derek> When representing a community, you need the community to see themselves in the work. And you equally need the audience to see the community in a positive, authentic, and resilient way. Toronto doesn’t always get to see the best side of Scarborough. People outside of the community don’t always see the good stories (some people call it ‘Scarlem’!), but we wanted to show Toronto and the world the true spirit of Scarborough. We did this by selecting iconic Scarborough locations for our shoots and shot both stills and video on film. It made these locations have a starring role in the campaign and gave us an iconic, elevated yet urban and authentic feel.
LBB> Moving onto the filming itself, Steam Films’ Pensacola directed! What inspired this decision, and made him the right option for the shoot?
Derek> His treatment showed us that he truly got the spirit and soul of the community, and got what we were trying to do with the VFX to elevate and hit home the point that these healthcare workers are doing so much with so little. His experience with visual storytelling and using artful scene transitions made us interested in him as a director initially. This spot has no VO, and we needed the visuals to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
LBB> Something awesome about the campaign is that it features actual employees as the hero of the spot. So, what was casting and working with them like?
Jennifer> This was the most exciting and rewarding part of the whole process. Internally we put out a casting call to our staff and our community to see who wanted to be a part of this next chapter, and we were shocked by the response. We received over 250 submissions or nominations within a week, with people telling us their stories of ‘grit and determination’. We had many amazing stories, so it was difficult to only select 10 people to feature in our print component of the campaign.
As for the TV shoot, again, we were shocked at the number of staff who volunteered to come out on their day off work to be an extra in the background. They loved being a part of a big production and experiencing what a shoot is all about.
Derek> Working with the staff at SHN was incredible. Their willingness to help by being IN the campaign further cemented everything we’ve learned about the people of Scarborough and the employees of SHN – how they always go beyond the call of duty and will do anything and everything it takes to help. It made the campaign 100% authentic and 100% Scarborough.
LBB> Showcasing a series of unique shots, from a super long hallway to a man with multiple fast-moving arms would not be easy. From a technical standpoint, what was bringing these challenging sequences to life like?
Derek> Pensacola has lots of experience with VFX and surreal transitions, and working very closely with The Vanity really helped make those scenes seamless. We wanted to ensure the VFX felt like an extension of our reality, especially because we shot on 16mm. Our production partners really understood that and brought it to life.
LBB> The music choice also hits home! Tell us more about this!
Derek> Maestro is a Scarborough legend, and the sample and lyrics of this song were a huge inspiration for the campaign. It was only fitting to use a hip hop track for SHN too – it matches the vibe and the soul of the community. This song and the lyrics do a lot of heavy lifting that VO might typically do. But to do it musically hits you in a much more emotional way.
LBB> What challenges have you faced in the making of this campaign, and how did you overcome them?
Derek> We would have normally had a ton of challenges, but we had such supportive and visionary clients throughout the process who saw what we were trying to do. It was a very collaborative process and the work truly got better with input from every client and member of the SHN community.
Jennifer> This campaign had big expectations based on the success of the first campaign. And what we learned the first time was that by taking our stakeholders along the journey with us in the creative process, we got more alignment and support overall. So, we followed the same process this time, but with even more sharing behind the curtain with an even larger group of stakeholders. We shared with hospital leadership, our board, the hospital’s board, our campaign cabinet and our trusted marketing advisors every step of the way to get us to a completed marketing campaign; the strategy, the creative idea, the scripts, etc. While this wasn’t a challenge to share, it was a challenge to take in all the feedback along the way and distil what needed to be relayed back to our agency partners.
LBB> Since launch, what has the initial response been like?
Derek> There has been a huge outpouring of support from the greater community of Scarborough and SHN employees. People really see themselves in our campaign and our donor target sees SHN in a new light. They see that they’ve done more than anyone thought possible with less than anyone could imagine – and join SHN on the journey to imagine what they could do with more.
Jennifer> The DMs and social media support we’ve received has been incredible. The people of Scarborough and our staff literally see themselves in our campaign and feel immense pride in the work. You can really feel the authenticity coming through when the community is sharing and saying such positive things.
LBB> How does this campaign fit into SHN’s plans for 2024 and beyond?
Jennifer> This is the second chapter of hopefully many more to come. We have a lot of storytelling still to do. We have exciting plans to actualise our vision to be Canada’s leading teaching hospital network. And thanks to donor support, we are on the way to creating Canada’s first no-wait emergency department, Toronto’s most innovative diagnostic imaging department, and establishing a brand-new research and education centre. Our current goal is to raise $200M, but we know that that is only the beginning. We have to continue to raise awareness and funds to keep up with the community’s needs and to update our old facilities.
LBB> Finally, is there anything you’d like to add for those who want to support SHN?
Jennifer> The people of Scarborough, especially our staff, have all the grit, determination and care in the world. We serve one of the most diverse communities in all of Canada. We continue to punch above our weight, but at the end of the day, our communities’ needs are outpacing our facilities. We have done so much with so little, so just imagine what more support could do for healthcare and our hospitals in Scarborough.
