Lowe Roche Goes Fearless for Canadian Cancer Society

Lowe Roche has launched a new interactive campaign for the Canadian Cancer Society called “The Fearless Challenge,” which attempts to raise money online by asking people (such as the actors involved with the campaign) to face their worst fears for a certain price to be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society. If the goal is met, individuals honor their pledge by facing their fear head-on.

“The Canadian Cancer Society is committed to creating a world where no Canadian fears cancer, but we are not there yet,” explains Mike Kirkpatrick, director, marketing for the Cancer Society in Ontario. “We know that more work needs to be done because a cancer diagnosis is still one of the scariest things a person can face.”

The campaign attempts to help raise funds to help those with cancer, based on the insight that a cancer diagnosis, despite progress with managing the disease, is still a very fearful proposition. So in addition to helping to raise funds, the campaign also attempts to help tackle that fear in cancer patients by showing people conquering their own greatest fears. Celebrity endorsers and participants in the campaign include actor Jason Priestley, sports commentator Jesse Palmer, Shannon and  Sophie Tweed-Simmons of Gene Simmons Family Jewels and Shannon & Sophie, and Hedley bassist and cancer survivor Tommy Mac. But the campaign isn’t just relying on celebrity endorsements, it invites viewers to participate by filming their own video and making a pledge at FearlessChallenge.com. Stick around for credits and actor Jonathan Keltz‘s pledge after the jump. (more…)

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Lowe Roche Creates Installation for The Missing Children’s Network

At an event hosted at The Beverley Hotel in downtown Toronto earlier this month, Lowe Roche created an installation piece honoring lost children using more than 1,000 Missing Kids Stamps. The installation featured stamps of Mélina Martin (missing, 2005), Maisy Odjick (missing, 2008), Tommy Clement-Pepin (missing, 2006), and Karar Al-Meiky (missing, 2006). As participants and passers-by took these stamps, the installation revealed a large portrait of Cédrika Provencher — “a solemn tribute, as well as a reminder of the greater impact that a single stamp will have.” Lowe Roche also designed the accompanying website and activation pieces for The Missing Children’s Network.

“Hope With Every Letter” was launched last year as a grassroots movement to put the faces of missing children on postage stamps, in an attempt to “drive action on behalf of the children who go missing in Canada each year.” At the Missing Kids Stamps website, “stamp personalization technology is seamlessly integrated to let Canadians create individual postage stamps featuring missing children” in the hopes that they will find their way into the hands of someone who recognizes a missing child. The project has been gaining attention, as it was recently nominated as a “People’s Voice” finalist in the 2014 Webby Awards. More importantly, the initiative has met with some success, with two children reunited with their families thanks in part to their efforts. The Missing Children’s Network used the installation as a way to launch year two of their “Hope With Every Letter” initiative, and were quite pleased with Lowe Roche’s work.

“The concept really is ingenious, and inline with our mission. We’ve made a commitment to the families that we work with to use every channel available to us to help them find their loved ones,” said Pina Arcamone, director general of The Missing Children’s Network. “The postage stamp is so universal, and passes through so many hands each day – it offers a way of paying homage to these children so they will never be forgotten. We were surprised no one had thought to use them in this way before, but more than happy to be the first to innovate in this way.”

You can learn more about the initiative in the video above, or by heading to the Missing Kids Stamps website. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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Lowe Roche Turns Yogis Into Bones for ‘The Power of Movement’

To promote The Power of Movement, Canada’s largest yoga fundraiser, Lowe Roche wanted to show that not only would the event raise money for arthritis, but that yoga can bring increased mobility to arthritis sufferers as well.

To link these ideas, Lowe Roche crafted a 30 second spot featuring yogis lined up to resemble “shapes of the human bone system.” The spot uses this as a striking visual representation of the ties between yoga, arthritis and mobility, accompanied by text explaining how you can help those with arthritis simply by doing yoga. All of this is accompanied by the obligatory new age music you’d hear at a typical yoga studio.

For Lowe Roche creative director Jane Murray, this was a very personal project. Murray suffers from a rare form of arthritis called Ankylosing Spondylitis, which causes the spine to fuse. When client Sabrina Young approached her asking if she knew any agencies who would take on pro-bono work for the Arthritis Research Foundation, she volunteered and made it her pet project.

Print elements of the campaign launched last month, while the television component of the campaign was only recently unveiled. The Power of Movement event is scheduled for March 2. Credits after the jump. continued…

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