The team at Brookline was thrilled to be asked to support the Alberta Cancer Foundation (ACF) with public relations services for the historic and transformational $50 million donation to the OWN.CANCER campaign for the new Calgary Cancer Centre from the Arthur J.E. Child Foundation. As the largest single donation ever received by Alberta Health Services, the Cancer Centre is now renamed the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre and will open in 2024. This gift will help accelerate cancer research innovations and provide world-leading cancer care and treatment to Calgarians, Albertans and Canadians.
Half of Canadians will experience cancer and one in four will die from this disease, but the OWN.CANCER campaign was created to increase the awareness and raise money to tackle five focus areas:
- Decrease cancer in the population
- Improve cancer treatment
- Improve patient experience
- Improve cancer outcomes
- Empower the best and the brightest
Brookline was extremely excited to work closely with the ACF team to provide a variety of service offerings. Firstly, the team was tasked with developing all content for the announcement including a press release, media advisory, speaking notes, a donor bio and fact sheet. In order to create appropriate content and messaging, we also worked with ACF partners, Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the University of Calgary (UofC) to ensure the content was developed, reviewed and approved in a timely manner.
Further to this, our designer created the official brand of the centre that will be used on the building and all promotional items. Along with this, Brookline developed all signage for the event and the ads. This included a step and repeat, invitation and a website banner and pop-up page. We worked diligently to ensure all creative pieces remained on brand with the OWN.CANCER campaign, the overarching campaign raising funds for the Calgary Cancer Centre.
The team at Brookline also took on the management of all marketing materials. This included ensuring that items were selected and ordered to meet ACF brand and quantity requirements. Material items included notebooks, pens, lanyards and t-shirts. Since the event concluded, we have been asked to order more swag as it has been very popular with ACF, AHS and UofC staff.
As part of this project, ACF wanted a highly produced video that told the story of who Arthur J.E. Child was, how the Foundation was formed, why this amount was donated to the Cancer Centre and impact the funds will have on cancer care in Alberta. This included scheduling interviews with previous friends and colleagues of Mr. Child, non-profit organizations the Foundation has contributed to, the Lead Trustee of the Foundation and medical professionals who were able to speak to the positive implications this donation will have on cancer care and research.
Additionally, our team coordinated the local and national print and digital ad buys. These ads were placed in the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald the day after the announcement. The digital ads received over 200,000 impressions on the first day of the campaign.
Finally, our team was pleased to provide our media relations expertise to invite and pitch media to attend the event and cover the story. The event had several media outlets in attendance and the announcement received pick-up in over 250 local and national publications some of which included the National Post, The Calgary Herald, Canadian Press and Global News.
The Brookline team was delighted to have had the opportunity to support ACF, AHS and UofC with such an important and historic announcement. This gift will help improve cancer research and care and we were honoured to be a part of ensuring this announcement reached a broad audience and received the proper attention it so truly deserves.
Rebecca Hurl is a Senior Account Manager at Brookline Public Relations. She has a passion for building connections and helping create effective communications strategies for clients.