Hockey 24: A Film by Canada
Hockey 24: A Film by Canada is a 90 minute documentary shot by thousands of Canadians - award winning filmmakers and families from coast to coast to coast. It captures the spirit of hockey at all levels through untold stories and it was all shot on one day: November 17, 2019.
Originally scheduled to have its World Premiere at the globally renowned Hot Docs Film Festival, Covid forced us to pivot. And we’re grateful we did. Hockey 24 gave Canada an opportunity to come together around a shared passion when it aired nationally on Sportsnet & Quebec’s TVA on May 24, 2020.
But we needed to promote it first.
To make this project a success, we needed to: 1. invite Canadians to participate, 2. thank them for participating, and 3. promote the film they helped make.
A film with thousands of Directors: We invited all Canadians to take part on November 17, 2019.
We’re so polite: A heartfelt ‘thank you’. What else would you expect from a hockey film in Canada?
The trailer: When you make a film about hockey in Canada, you get the voice of hockey in Canada as your movie trailer voice over.
Branded Entertainment grows business.
Scotiabank supports hockey at all levels and has their name on rink boards and arenas. But other brands were encroaching on their space with breakthrough ideas. Scotiabank needed to regain their leadership position in the sport at a time when enrolment in community hockey was down.
By engaging with the audience through a shared passion, not only did we generate attention for the brand, it also helped generate interest in Scotiabank’s products.
The countdown: P.K. Subban’s social media countdown to ‘shoot day’.
Product ads: In one of many product ads, Auston Matthews promotes product offers.
So many content possibilities.
With an idea like this, we planned to make contextually relevant content for special days (i.e. Mother’s Day), specific awareness months (i.e. Physical Disabilities), and tailored to special communities (i.e. Indigenous). But what we didn’t plan on was having a purely positive message to share when the sport endured some negative press about racism, locker-room bullying, and shrinking enrolment. This was Scotia’s response.
When the sport of hockey got some negative attention, this helped Scotiabank take the high road.
Results.
500,000+ Canadian homes tuned in to watch its premier. It was the 3rd most watched show in Canada. #Hockey24 was a top 3 trending hashtag on Twitter. And it was talked about in newspaper articles, on morning shows, in podcasts, and by the commissioner of the NHL. What’s more, Scotiabank saw a lift in brand awareness by 99% which is known to contribute to important business growth measures like ‘propensity to consider’ and ‘likelihood to recommend’.