Dhaval Bhatt

What do you do when you’re being outspent by an American beer behemoth 8 to 1? When you’re no longer the No. 1 selling beer in the very country you’re born and brewed in? You rally Canadian brewers (yes, even the competition) to create the most Canadian case of beer ever with a simple call to arms - Make It Canadian.

The campaign was featured on Forbes, CNN, CBC, NBC and every major Canadian news outlet, and helped Molson Canadian once again outsell Bud for the first time in 4 years.

With a global pandemic around, things like sustainability and doing what’s right for the planet had started to take a back seat in people’s minds. But with most of the world in lockdown, now more than ever, our homes have become our little worlds. And IKEA wanted to show that a more sustainable world starts right there.

Everybody loves giving advice, but not all advice is created equal. This spot launched Scotiabank’s new brand platform and helped it stand out from the big 5 Canadian banks with the highest brand affinity scores for Scotia in over a decade.

Canada is one of the most diverse countries in the world. But its national sport doesn’t look very diverse, or sound like it. So, to make more Canadians feel welcome to the game we broadcast Hockey Night in Canada in languages other than English or French for the first time in the iconic show’s 60 year history.

The special broadcast was covered on ESPN, CBS, Bleacher Report and the Globe and Mail, just to name a few.

How serious is IKEA about sustainability? Serious enough to encourage people to keep stuff weighing us down out of landfills by giving old furniture a new life instead of buying new.

Part of a broader global campaign around IKEA’s sustainability initiatives, this ad has been featured on news outlets like CBC, CNN, FOX, HuffPost and Fast Company.

Honey Nut Cheerios wanted to raise awareness of the alarming decline in bee populations and make bringing back the bees its purpose. After all, honey is the star ingredient in its product and a talking bee its mascot. So, we took the iconic bee off the box for the first time in the brand's history.

The campaign has been covered on Time, Huffington Post, CBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, Fast Company and Mashable, just to name a few. Running for over 4 years across Canada and USA, it is considered one of the most successful campaigns at General Mills, ever.
 

Drinking from the Stanley Cup is one of the most revered traditions in all of sports. So, in a year when even the cup winning players may not be able to take that cherished sip (you know, COVID-19), we did something to let all hockey fans do what they’ve always dreamed of - drink from Lord Stanley’s mug.

The limited edition Molson Stanley Cup Batch beers were sold across Canada in controlled releases throughout the playoffs to give real fans a chance of getting their hands on them. They can also be bought at exorbitant prices on eBay.

Hockey has a diversity problem. And in a country as diverse as Canada, that’s not good for hockey or for its biggest sponsor, Scotiabank. So, Scotiabank along with some of the game’s biggest stars took a stand against racism in the game with its new platform, ‘Hockey for All’.

The launch campaign was featured on Bleacher Report, Globe & Mail, CNN; and the video generated over 4 million organic views in its first week alone.

If you told 15 year old me that someday you'll be making an ad in Canada, for the Swedish company IKEA, featuring the same Bollywood hit song blaring out of my (my dad's) Maruti 800 in that very moment, I'd say, 'you’re on crack, bro'. In Hindi.

Online Sextortion is a serious crime and has recently grown 89% among teen boys. But teens don’t want to talk to their parents or teachers about sex, and scare tactics used in most online safety ads don’t always work. 

So, to create an easy way into the conversation, we turned to humour. We encouraged teens to send a naked mole rat instead of nudes. 

The campaign has been featured in over 1,000 news articles in 78 countries, including The New Yorker, Vice, Mashable, Fast Company, Washington Post and The Times.

Anyone who grew up in the 70s, 80s or 90s has made a mixtape. So, for 70s, 80s and 90s music radio station, Boom 97.3, we created MixtapeOfYou.com - a fun site designed to create a digital experience reminiscent of actually making a mixtape. 

With cassette tape nostalgia at its peak in pop culture, the campaign blew past every engagement benchmark and generated over 6 million targeted impressions within the GTA.

Spearheaded by a video that went on to receive over 5 million unpaid views on YouTube and got featured at the TED Conference, this campaign was created for the launch of Sapporo beer in Canada. Also part of the campaign was an online game that let people explore the mythical brewery and win a trip to Japan, and the now iconic Katana tap handle that can be seen at bars across the world.

In 2021, IKEA decided to stop printing its iconic catalogue and go fully digital. Fans of the catalogue were devastated. So we created a special keepsake to last a lifetime.

The average business traveller is away from home 48 days a year. Naturally, the best part about a business trip is coming home, especially when you have kids who can’t wait to see you again. With this in mind, WestJet created the Flight Light - a night light that uses live flight data to project the parent’s flight path onto their child’s bedroom ceiling to get them even more excited about their parents coming home.

The Flight Light has been covered on Forbes, Bloomberg, Wired, CNN and business publications across the globe. Meanwhile, WestJet has seen a record uptick in Premium Cabin bookings, up 63% from the same time last year.

When it comes to climate change, it’s hard not to think that our individual actions don’t make a difference. So, to inspire people to see the power of every single sustainable action, we teamed up with Cannes Film Grand Prix winning director, Adam Berg, and Oscar winning DP, Linus Sandgren, to show how one little action is seamlessly linked to a greater collective.

From overbooking flights to bad customer service, WestJet’s biggest competitor has long had a bad reputation for putting profits first and guests second. So, as the airline known for its friendly staff and superior customer service, WestJet wanted to show Canadians that there was an alternative to being treated like cattle.

Star Wars wanted to fan the flames of fan passion in order to continue building interest in the new generation of Star Wars films and help drive sale of Star Wars merchandise, especially around father’s day.

So, we took one of the most iconic lines of dialogue in cinema history and created a touching homage to dads passing down their love of Star Wars to the next generation.

With over 10.7 million views over father's day weekend alone, this was Disney/Star Wars most successful video content post with social engagement levels on par with Star Wars trailers. And the love didn't stop at shares. Star Wars saw an 8% lift in merchandise sales during Father’s Day.

While the competition was talking about tech and specs, for Mother's Day Kobo wanted to give people a more heartfelt reason to gift an e-reader. 

Originally launched in Canada, the ads were eventually running in 9 countries around the world, and the TV spot is on BuzzFeed's list of Best Mother's Day ads of all time. It's also one of those rare occasions when work makes it out to the world, just as it was presented in the new business pitch.
 

To launch Questrade’s robo-advisor platform, we identified one key truth - Canadians didn’t know much about the fees they were paying on their investments. And when they found out just how much those fees were eating into their returns, they wanted answers. So, we created ‘Ask Tough Questions’ - a simple ask to get Canadians asking their financial institutions tough questions about their money.

Since Campaign launch, Questrade has more than double its month on month growth and cemented its reputation as a disruptor in the financial services industry. It’s also gone from a brand with almost zero recognition to people quoting lines verbatim from their ads.

What happens when the kids who were told to “turn off that damn TV and go outside” grow up and have kids of their own with screens they never would have dreamed of? How do you address this when you’re a brand with the actual word “Nature” in your name? 

To shed light on our changing relationship with nature, we grabbed 3 generations of the same families, and had them answer one simple question - What did you do for fun as a kid?

The resulting video has garnered over 25 million views at last check, $3.7 Million worth of earned media and is responsible for a 35% increase in sales.

Most Canadians think that Habitat builds homes in far away developing and disaster struck countries. We had to not only make them aware of the need here at home, but also get them to care. 

So, we created a PSA that showed a family's journey of upheaval and the daughter's innocent efforts to build a home out of toy blocks. We then got people to donate and help bring that dream to life.

With a $0 media budget, the toy house helped Habitat receive over $300,000 in donated media and generate over 78 million social impressions.

Maple Leaf Foods is Canada's largest food company with millions of people putting its food on their tables every single day. This first ad kicked off its new master brand campaign celebrating 'Doers' and defined what Maple Leaf stands for and the kind of food it makes. Not just for Canadians, but also for itself.

The following two commercials helped Maple Leaf orchestrate a turnaround to put Prime, a premium brand in a steady 4-year decline, back at the centre of dinner tables across Canada with double digit growth. It came from the simple truth that most normal people don't care about chicken. The cheapest one in the aisle gets in the grocery cart. So we moved the conversation from chicken to something a bit more meaningful.

The Cassies, now know as Effie Canada, is a show that awards campaigns with proven business results. Clients, understandably, really care about how they and their ad agencies do there. But what about people outside of advertising?

Wiser's created a limited edition whiskey in a small batch and thankfully, albeit unimaginatively, named it Small Batch.