NATIONAL wins three CPRS National Awards of Excellence

Last night, the Canadian Public Relations Society presented its 2017 CPRS National Awards of Excellence, which recognize outstanding achievement in a comprehensive public relations and communications project or program. We are thrilled to share that NATIONAL has been recognized with the following awards:

• Canadian Digital Communications Campaign of the Year – Don’t Overlook What’s Missing: Pediatric Vaccination Reminder Campaign – Pfizer Canada

• Canadian Advocacy and Social Marketing Campaign of the Year – It’s About mBC Time – Pfizer Canada

• Canadian Marketing Communications Campaign of the Year – Live InSync – DanoneWave Canada Accepting the awards on behalf of the Firm, our colleagues Marie-Christine Garon (Montreal), Chrystiane Mallaley (Halifax) and Nancy Arab (Calgary) made the trip to Kelowna, B.C. to attend the annual awards gala ceremony.

Congratulations to all those involved! Our winning campaigns were all the result of great team and cross-office efforts, and we’re very proud that our work continues to be recognized.

Our winners received Awards of Excellence for exemplifying NATIONAL’s commitment to bold thinking. Our 2016 award winners provided our clients with innovative strategies to connect to target audiences and create the enduring partnerships that NATIONAL is known for.

More about the NATIONAL’s winning work:

Pfizer Canada: Don’t Overlook What’s Missing: Pediatric Vaccination Reminder

For a vaccine to be effective, the majority of a population needs to be up-to-date on their scheduled vaccinations. Some vaccines require multiple shots to offer the best protection, yet often parents forget to complete their children’s vaccination schedule on time. We wanted to remind parents that vaccines can require multiple shots and that all need to be completed for them to be most effective. Using famous children’s stories that have “three” in the title – “Three Little Pigs”, “Three Bears” and “Three Blind Mice” – we developed creative content that replaced the “3” with “2” to trigger parents’ memories, and illustrate that when vaccines aren’t completed, something is amiss. Creating a parallel between vaccines and these children’s stories is a reminder that vaccinations, like these books, is a standard part of childhood.

During National Immunization Awareness Week we launched a dynamic and creative campaign through Savvy Mom, encouraging parents to download a vaccine-reminder app (canimmunize.ca). App downloads increased by 55% while the campaign was in-market.

Pfizer Canada: It’s About mBC Time

This integrated campaign was strategically developed based on in-depth Belief Based Behaviour research and insights, and aimed to elevate the voice of women living with an incurable disease. Its About mBC Time brought Canadians face-to-face with mBC, and included two emotional online videos, a website, a paid social strategy, street team deployment and a media tour with two notable Canadians touched by the disease.

The campaign far exceeded expectations and in addition to this most recent award, was shortlisted for the Sabre Awards Canadian campaign of the year and has won an IABC Gold Quill Award of Excellence in the area of social media as well as the IABC Jake Wittmer Award, which is granted to one entry each year that showed the most outstanding approach to research in addressing a communication issue or opportunity.

DanoneWave Canada: Activia’s Live InSync

DanoneWave Canada and NATIONAL developed the Live InSync campaign to support Activia in its quest to engage a new, younger (25-39 year old) consumer demographic through a dialogue about the advantages of achieving balance, or being ‘InSync.’ The campaign leveraged a strategic mix of brand storytelling, influencer partnerships, social media, advertising, media relations and special events that were inspired by the target audience’s holistic approach to health and wellbeing.

NATIONAL worked alongside other DanoneWave Canada partner agencies to adapt the global strategy and creative developed by Team Danone at Y&R Group for the unique, bilingual Canadian market.