The Art of Conquering Cancer

Many people think of The Princess Margaret as a lottery or a hospital, but we are so much more. We are one of the top 5 cancer research centres in the world, and our research continues to transform patient care and shape cancer history. Every year, The Princess Margaret releases a brand campaign. This year, after conducting a series of interviews with our doctors and researchers, we noticed a pattern. They all spoke about the importance of creativity when it comes to their work. Based on this insight, we developed a multi-faceted campaign titled "The Art of Conquering Cancer". The campaign gives people a glimpse into the lives and scientific processes of our renowned doctors, researchers and scientists, while underscoring the creativity involved in science, and the importance of new thoughts and free-thinking when it comes to making new discoveries. Research shows that despite The Princess Margaret’s many revolutionary discoveries, our work is often attributed back to other nonprofit organizations within the healthcare sector. Overall, our brand recognition is low amongst Canadians. In fact, when it comes to our brand’s tagline, only 26% associate it with us, while 49% mis-attribute it to our direct competitor, the Canadian Cancer Society. In order to own our achievements and to align The Princess Margaret brand with the unique creative approach of our renowned researchers and scientists, we created a campaign to show people how we’re revolutionizing the way cancer is treated around the world. We shifted Canadians’ associations and showed them the significance and effectiveness of the creative research we do by bringing them behind-the-scenes and into our cancer centre. We created broadcast and connected tv spots featuring some of the brightest minds at The Princess Margaret. We also featured patients to emphasize the impact of the work being done. We continued to get our message out through large-scale billboards, contextual media buys, social and transit takeovers. The results? Not only did the campaign garner over 50,000,000 impressions in just six weeks of being in market, it resulted in a drastic 300% increase in online donations year over year.