2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

A Blizzard® in a blizzard? Yes, please.

DQ Canada, famous for its Blizzard® treats and iconic red spoon, is a go-to spot for frozen treats, especially in the summer. However, between December and March, Blizzard® sales typically see a seasonal dip of about 35%. Despite the winter chill, the agency’s research revealed that Canadians largely don't stop eating ice cream. The production of about 122 million scoops in Canada during March 2024 — a mere 12% less than the July peak — confirms that ice cream remains a little treat staple even when the forecast dips below 0° C.

The main challenge, however, was that Blizzards® simply weren't top of mind during the colder months, leading people to choose other options. The brand is in steep competition with McDonald’s and Tim Hortons, two of Canada’s biggest advertisers. Dairy Queen’s typical annual spend is 30% relative to theirs, making it even more challenging to capture attention.

On top of that, DQ generally pulls back on Blizzard® ad spend during the winter months to focus on their hot food offerings (burgers, chicken strips etc.), and that meant if the agency wanted to do something big for the Blizzard in chilliest time of the year, it needed to be a combination of high-impact and low cost (always a fun combination to solve for!).

Canadians aren't afraid of the cold, and so eating Blizzards® during blizzards is a perfectly acceptable winter activity. Every snowbank has the potential to remind Canadians that Blizzards® are the ultimate frozen treat.

This winter, Canada was hit by the biggest blizzard in years, leaving near-record levels of snow. The agency seized the opportunity to turn an abundant feature of Canadian winters — snowbanks — into an unignorable OOH campaign. To find the perfect snow banks, they scoured weather data to find Canada’s snowiest locations, and then cross-referenced that list with locations that had a nearby DQ.

Using giant replicas of the iconic red DQ spoon and Smarties toppings, they turned snowbanks in five smaller markets into giant and instantly recognizable Blizzard® treats. The oversized installations brought the brand’s playful nature to life in an unexpected way and left people craving Blizzard® treats.

And since there are no options to buy branded media placements on snowbanks, they got budget savvy. Real budget savvy. In fact, to create and place five experimental OOH placements, they needed to go guerrilla, creating the Blizzard Banks with $0 in media placement.

Investing in a big splash campaign to sell soft serve during the winter wasn’t necessarily a priority for Dairy Queen Canada. As mentioned earlier, DQ generally saves its big brand Blizzard® moments (and dollars) for times when demand is at its peak. Despite this lower prioritization, the agency looked at it as a way to solve a persistent business challenge.

Uncovering the observation that most Canadians don’t give up ice cream during the winter allowed them to start thinking about making noise around the iconic frozen treat when both DQ and their competitors were relatively quiet, but consumers were still receptive.

This helped them arrive at their dead-simple, yet powerful insight: eating Blizzards® during blizzards was an activity many Canadians could get behind. With a name like Blizzard®, there was a real ability to own the behaviour of winter ice cream eating in a way few other brands could.

As a clear indicator of the reverence people have for the Blizzard®, the campaign's early success was clear, with people snapping photos and putting them up on social media even before the installations were fully set up. Following the 3-day activation in five smaller markets, the campaign achieved national reach (21 million impressions) and helped DQ grow its organic social following by 9% in just 3 days. Most significantly, the installations effectively encouraged Canadians to shift their habits and enjoy more Blizzard® treats during the winter months, resulting in a notable 10% increase in Blizzard® sales in February compared to the
previous year.

The Blizzard® Banks proved that while Dairy Queen may not be the biggest ice cream player in the game, they’re certainly the best.

Credits

Publicis Toronto
Vinicius Dalvi - Chief Creative Officer
Josh Dornan - Art Director
Claire Mills - Copywriter
Chris Whyte - Group Strategy Director
Larissa Visentin - Art Director
Jackson Rothwell - Copywriter
Shawna Hayman - SVP, Brand Lead
Silvia Parkinson - Group Account Director
Haleigh Magill - Account Director
Rachel Senay - Account Supervisor
Rylee Strachan - VP Digital Strategy
Abby Guthrie - Digital Strategy Director
Eliza Pratter - Jr. Digital Strategist
Chris Desjardins - SVP, Sponsorship & Events
Sabeeca Ali - Director, Brand Experience
Ryan Balter - Account Executive
Chris Taylor - Program Director
Benjamin Jones - Associate Technical Director
Victor Yves - Head of Art
Myah Wills - Designer
Mike Charal - Team Lead, Motion Design
Elliot Berkis - Designer
Sydney Wills - Production Designer
Yuriy Leheta - Production Designer
Marley Garren - Junior Motion Designer

The Pub Production
Terry Theofilactidis - VP Commercial Content
Reid Marshall - Director
Alex Chan - Photographer
Rebecca Burtnik - Post Producer
Ingrid Theiner - Editor
Angeli Pineda - Editor
Adam Kemp - Colourist
LePub MTL - Audio Mixing