In most cases, adverts for paediatric charities and hospitals understandably highlight the devastating cruelty of children’s illnesses in fairly direct terms. As such, a new film for SickKids Foundation – an organisation raising funds for Canada’s Hospital for Sick Children – stands out as a rousing call to arms.

Created by the foundation’s new agency, FCB Canada, The Count manages to convey heartbreak and gravity while also illustrating the optimism and grit that extraordinary young people with life-changing health conditions are capable of.

Building on its long-running brand platform ‘SickKids Vs’, the film features challenging images of young people in hospital beds and surgical wards, which are contrasted with symbolic, striking scenes of young people in birthday-themed obstacle courses and boxing rings – a reminder that even to reach another year of their life is a fight.

The film is set to a powerful that again balances the tone between heartbreaking and uplifting, and is also narrated by a chorus of children counting upwards. By the end of the ad, the numbers far surpass the average life expectancy, all the way up to 150 – the number of years the SickKids hospital has been operating for.

“From the first meeting with FCB they reminded us and held us to task that this work had to lean into the VS fight, and that in order to motivate donations we had to focus on our current fight – a fight for more birthdays for our patients. They helped us to see we shouldn’t water down our own message by trying to do too many things,” says Roy Gruia, director of brand marketing at SickKids Foundation. “So, this work does not focus on accomplishments of the last 150 years but rather reflects the hospital’s core mission of the past, present and future, while our birthday acts as inspiration for the concept.”

fcb.com