Better Tomorrows: A reflection
45 stories collected over 45 days. That was the goal of this year’s Better Tomorrows campaign. For those of you who have been following along, thank you for taking time out of each day to experience the real-life moments of our patients and families. These stories could not have been collected without the support of a wonderful team at SickKids. This includes Lisa, Manager of the Ambassador Program, who spent many days and evenings working with the families and staff whom you saw featured in the campaign. This is Lisa’s reflection on her time spent on this powerful campaign.
As you all can imagine with a dream as big as this campaign was, so many things had to fall into place. We needed a creative team that understood the sensitivities of SickKids. Our partners at advertising agency JWT (Raquel, Cindy, Sarah, Mike and Ryan), the production company Sons and Daughters, the talented director Mark Zibert and additional cinematographers Andy Ferreira and Marco Baldonado, production manager Joan Bell and post-production house Panic and Bob all devoted countless hours to this dream. They were dedicated and passionate and generous. Appreciation also goes to hospital staff who bravely accepted the intrusion of camera crews as they went about their important work.
Mostly, however, it’s the families who deserve the appreciation and the kudos.
This campaign is about the families.
This campaign is about the families. First of all they said ‘yes’ – a brave and generous thing to do. Each family had their own reasons. For some, they are unbelievably proud of their little fighters. Or, they want to document and remember this experience and provide a tangible record for their child who is too little to understand so that, when he or she is big, they will see what they experienced. For some, it’s because they want to make the way easier for other families who follow in their footsteps and they know that, although they might not be able to make a huge gift to SickKids, their participation will touch the public, and the community will rally round and make gifts to this hospital. For others this was a way to make meaning out of an experience that has shaken their world.
On behalf of SickKids and also on behalf of all of the members of the creative team and production house, I want to say thank you to all of the families for their profound generosity, their leap of faith and their courage in saying ‘yes’ to allowing us to bear witness to these personal moments and document these stories. They let us walk with them, with as many as three cameras sometimes inches away from their faces, as they were scared, vulnerable, in crises, having a good moment, a good day, or all of the above at the same time.
Families were told that they could ask us to turn the camera off anytime they wanted. Yet they never did. They were told that they could change their mind and ask that the footage be pulled, yet none of them did.
These families are our heroes.
By this act of generosity, courage and faith, we were able to accomplish something brave and unprecedented as an advertising campaign. These short stories provided an intimate view of two months in the life of The Hospital for Sick Children. It’s true that we produced 45 30-second commercials, but this portrait of the hospital is much more than 45 commercials. This campaign is a testament to courage and tenacity and love.
