OCTOBER
We chose six of the best Canadian ads from October. Now it's up to you to choose your favourite.
At the end of each month, the editorial team here at Campaign selects a few of our favourite ads that we covered during that month. Then, we ask readers to pick the best of that bunch.
The winning ad will help us determine the finalists that will make it into the Campaign Cup—a bracket-style tournament each March to identify the best ad of the year.
You can see this month’s contenders below.
View the shortlisted work here and vote below
Skip to the Good Part
Client: Skip
Agency: Courage
After relying largely on international creative for the past two years, SkipTheDishes (now known simply as Skip) has appointed a new creative AOR in Courage, and brought back an old favourite in spokesman Jon Hamm. The Mad Men star, who appeared in more than 30 ads for the brand between 2018 and 2022, comfortably slips back into the role in a series of humorous scenarios that starkly contrast with the dour misanthrope he played in his most famous role.
Screaming Pain
Client: Delivra Health Brands
Agency: Good&Ready
Consumer research for Delivra Health Brands found that many people with chronic pain describe it as “living with a background noise they cannot switch off,” said Good&Ready creative Terry Drummond. That insight led to this humorous ad for Delivra’s LivRelief brand—a literal depiction of the screaming pain a woman feels in her knee that can only be stopped by its cream.
Bacon is Rain
Client: Greenfield Natural Meat
Agency: No Fixed Address
To let consumers know that its products are carbon-neutral, Greenfield aligned itself with the film industry trick of using fried bacon to create the sound of rain. The brand created an audio library of different bacon sizzles that audio houses can access for free, and advertised them in a video clip that paired the sounds with rain-related scenes in popular movie scripts. A weather-triggered OOH billboard also cues a clip of bacon frying when it rains.
Stutter.ca
Client: Canadian Stuttering Association
Agency: John St.
The Canadian Stuttering Association created 410,000 unique URLs to demonstrate the many ways people stutter—all of which direct to the CSA website. Examples of these variations are demonstrated as text bubbles in a 15-second video, and on OOH posters. The posters have received positive reception in the r/stutter Reddit forum, where people praised the creative for translating the cadence of various stutters to paper, which they said is not an easy task.
Pump It
Client: OK Tire
Agency: Lifelong Crush
“Pump It” is one of three spots in OK Tire’s campaign timed for “changeover” season, but it’s the one that feels like the best representation of Lifelong Crush’s emphasis on humour with this campaign. The idea of a farmer using a simple hand pump to inflate a giant tractor tire is already inherently funny, but the visual of him hopefully checking his (negligible) progress is when the spot really begins to gain traction.
Healthcare Lives
Client: Humber River Health Foundation
Agency: Diamond
Unlike much hospital awareness and fundraising creative, the message at the core of this campaign from Humber River Health Foundation is about the entire healthcare system in Canada. Humber River is described as the first fully digital hospital in North America, and this film from Diamond presents the innovation coming from the hospital as a potential cure for Canada’s healthcare crisis.
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