Last year, SickKids created 45 stories about 45 kids over 45 days for its "Better Tomorrows" campaign. Cossette was asked to take that content and, with very little budget, leverage it to drive direct donations.

Millennials are more likely to donate if they believe that their donation will have a direct impact on the kids. Second, millennials do not respond well to delayed gratification and require immediate response to their actions. So, the agency decided to leverage the content in a way that potential donors could affect the children's story, or the outcome of their story, immediately.

When a child enters a hospital, it's as if their life is put on pause – birthdays, recess, hanging out at home everything comes to a sudden standstill.

For the "Life Unpaused" campaign, the foundation and Cossette used the emotionally gripping storylines from the 45 day campaign videos to draw viewers in. Once the video hit a critical point in the narrative, it would pause with a message asking viewers to donate to unpause the child's life and see how the kids are doing today. As they donated online, their name was added to the video timeline, registering the individual's donation exactly when they made it.

Each video had a target number of donations. Once that target was hit, the video would be permanently unpaused and released via social media.

The campaign increased online donations by 370% versus last year's campaign, and all six stories were unlocked in five weeks. The foundation tracked a total of 2.7 million video views and the campaign garnered 74.5 million media impressions.