June 2

Forsman & Bodenfors, along with sister media agency The Media Kitchen, have been chosen to help launch Pillway, a digital pharmacy solution that uses AI to personalize the interactions between consumers and pharmacists.

“It’s always a pleasure to partner with a company that is disrupting its category,” said Forsman CEO Melanie Johnston. “More than just delivery, Pillway uses technology to stay connected with patients and their doctors to provide everything from advice to refills and renewals.”

Pillway is live in B.C., Alberta and Ontario, with plans to roll out across the country.

Toronto PR shop Chimera Collective has hired Guillaume Brière as its first creative director. He will oversee the agency’s new “Comeback Consulting” program, aimed at helping businesses with their post-pandemic recovery through services including consulting, PR and creative content.

Briere has more than a decade of experience in branded content and editorial, on both the agency side and in-house, with brands including Maison Birks and L’Oreal Luxe, and publications including Fairmont Magazine and Air Canadas’s in-flight magazine en Route.

“I believe that the best brand strategies depend on a truly 360-degree perspective, and I’m confident that partnering with Guillaume—a master of intuitive, disruptive thinking—will expand our horizons in exciting and unexpected ways,” said Chimera Collective founder and CEO Courtney Khimji.

June 1

Cadbury Canada is celebrating the acts of generosity and kindness that have sprung up in communities across the country during the pandemic, with a new video called “Contagious Generosity.”

Developed by Ogilvy Canada with production by OPC, the video highlights the responses to the lockdown—from people sewing masks and making hand sanitizer, to the nightly salutes to front-line healthcare providers, impromptu musical performances, even a child’s drive-by joke stand.

“The human spirit couldn’t be contained… and when this is all over, we hope that some things don’t change,” says the concluding voiceover. The work ladders up to Cadbury’s “There’s goodness in everyone positioning.”

Direction for the spot was handled remotely in Toronto, with cinematographers in four provinces using their own resources to document moments that were taking place close to their home.

“Our aim was to capture real people performing real acts of generosity; it couldn’t feel like a bunch of actors performing a script,” says Ogilvy Canada’s chief creative officer Brian Murray. “This is an example of a perceived production limitation that resulted in a solution that produced an even better result than traditional methods.”

Carlsberg Canada is donating 20 cents from every bottle and can of its flagship beer sold in Canada to Community Food Centres Canada, an organization working to create community food centres and food programs.

Carlsberg says that its goal of the “Buy a Carlsberg and support the Good Food Access” program is to sell at least 500,000 bottles and cans, for a donation of $100,000 to organizations working at the front lines of food insecurity.

CFCC established the Good Food Access Fund in March to provide food and supplies to the most vulnerable Canadians. It has granted nearly $10 million to 400 organizations across the country since its inception.

Students from Miami Ad School Toronto and Hamilton’s Mohawk College won four awards in The One Club for Creativity‘s recent global Young Ones Student Award competition, which honours creative talent in colleges around the world in a variety of creative disciplines.

Miami Ad School Toronto‘s Rachel LeBlanc was among just 23 students worldwide who won in the Young Ones Portfolio competition, in which students submit up to 15 pieces of their work and have it judged by industry professionals.

Miami Ad School Toronto also won a Silver Pencil in the Young Ones Brief competition for Vans “Skatefulness,” by art directors Michael Boatman, Jaclyn McConnell, Allison Kustek and Andronicus Wu, as well as a Bronze Pencil for “Miranda” for PartnersGlobal by writer Tyler J. Edwards and art director David Lopezby.

Miami Ad School Toronto finished 10th overall in the Creative School of the Year rankings, which was won by New York’s School of Visual Arts.

The Mohawk College student team of art director Alicia Young and writer Laura Lumbers also won a Bronze Pencil in the Brief competition for “The King’s Street.” Entries in this year’s Young Ones competition were up 15% over last year.