2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

HomeEquity Bank (HEB) is dedicated to improving the lives of homeowners 55+. It’s the leading provider of reverse mortgages in Canada, which helps seniors stay in the homes they love and enjoy the retirement they’ve worked decades to achieve.

HEB’s commitment to seniors goes beyond offering financial services. The company actively advocates for this demographic, speaking to issues that are relevant to its customer base. One area HEB has been particularly committed to is its support for Canadian veterans. For Remembrance Day 2022, HEB was the presenting partner for the fourth consecutive year of the Legion National Foundation’s Digital Poppy Campaign for Remembrance Day.

Canadians are fortunate to live in a country where war is very distant from us. Few of us have personal experience of conflict, and when they think of war, their minds go to far-off places. This presents a challenge in developing a program for a company whose business is squarely focused on the home.

The brand had to find a way to connect the place that is most familiar to us to events and places that are physically and emotionally distant from their own experiences. They began thinking about what home might have meant to veterans while they were far away from it. Since there are no WWI veterans and few from WWII alive to interview, their research had to be done through historical records.

They found a unique source of insight: the Canadian Letters & Images Project at Vancouver Island University, an online archive of the Canadian war experience, as told through the letters and images of Canadians themselves. When they immersed themselves in soldier’s letters home, they discovered the emotional resonance of home vividly sprang to life. It struck them that the feelings they have about home now are no different than those of veterans on the battlefield. This connected Canadian homeowners today to the veterans the brand was seeking to honour. It also led to their insight: War no longer seems far away when you realize it once affected life within your own home.

“Letters Home”: bringing veterans’ wartime sacrifices to life through the letters they sent home. For three solid weeks, they sifted through thousands of letters from the archive. Only about 10% included addresses. For many of the letters they wished to feature, further research was required to connect the letters to a home address. This was done by painstakingly cross-referencing the letters with the archives database of attestation cards – cards soldiers filled out before leaving for war that captured their personal information such as home address and next of kin.

Ultimately one hundred were chosen to be replicated and sent to their original addresses in 29 cities across Canada in the weeks leading up to November 11. The residents of today met the residents of the past in an experience that was as emotional as it was unexpected.

The campaign included 30-second national TV, social media, 10-second billboards, major market out-of-home (TSAs), PR, and the campaign website. The thought-provoking video conveyed both the importance and power of wartime letters. The TSAs allowed Canadians to see the letters brought to life in their own neighbourhoods, bringing them into a very personal context and adding immediacy to the experience. To create a larger experience, a website was created featuring over 300 letters originally sent to homes across Canada. The site could be searched by address, city, or postal code to enable people across the country to find letters near their own homes.

Following the search, visitors were prompted to purchase a digital poppy which, if the visitor wished, could be dedicated to a specific veteran. “Letters Home” offered a unique and insightful window into the past, bringing a human face to war beyond stats and names, and demonstrating how war is closer to home than they think.

The “Letters Home” campaign immediately drew attention to Canadian veterans and their experiences. Despite a limited media budget, the campaign generated significant online media coverage across Canada with over 23.4 million media impressions, including Toronto Sun, Postmedia, and the front page of the Times Colonist. CBC Radio-One Toronto aired an extended five-minute segment featuring the letters and their goals.

Completely by chance, one of the letters went to an Indigo employee, and the company is now looking into publishing a book of the letters. “Letters Home” helped raise over $189,029 in donations for veterans
and their families.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Brian Murray
Creative Director/Art Director: Vic Bath
Creative Director/Copywriter: Dan Cummings
Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Michael Romaniuk
Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Marco Buchar
Design Director: Damian Simev
Designer: Ana-Marija Vlahovic, Jackman Chiu
Agency Producers: Ola Stodulska, Tim Lynch, Sarah Lasch
Account Team: Lauren Boultwood, Samantha Tang
Strategy Director: Maxine Thomas
Client: HomeEquity Bank
Clients: Yvonne Ziomecki, Vivianne Gauci, Erin Wilson, Niary Toodakian, Jack Wilson, Saad Sharfuddin
Media Agency: OMD & iQuanti
Media Team: Dwayne Mataseje (OMD), Mitchell Cornelisse (OMD), Ishita Aggarwal (iQuanti),
Bindiya Jiwani (iQuanti)
PR Agency: Weber Shandwick
PR Team: Jennifer Wasley, Adam Bornstein
Production House: Zulubot
Director: Dan Cummings
Researcher: Chris Greenberg
Production House Producers: Ben Bentivegna, Colleen Allen
Post Production: Zulubot
Editor: Jessie Posthumus
Colour Grading: Felipe Chaparro
Motion Graphics: Miguel Natividad
Audio Engineer: Dino Cuzzolino
Photographer: Noah Mroueh
Senior Developer: Jake Edwards