client: New Brunswick Nurses Uniondate published: Jan 04, 2019 content type: Commercials
commercial
New Brunswick Nurses Union
I want to be..
NBNU needed a strategic approach to tackle two major challenges: re-inspiring and supporting its exhausted members, and creating a compelling visual campaign to build public and political support for healthcare reform and recruitment.
How We Helped
Anthemic brand videos featuring real provincial nurses, multi-platform social shorts, and optimized digital ad assets.
The Challenge
The healthcare sector in New Brunswick has faced severe, systemic strains, leaving frontline nurses grappling with immense workloads, widespread staffing shortages, and a high risk of burnout. Representing thousands of registered nurses and nurse practitioners across the province, the New Brunswick Nurses Union (NBNU) needed to address two critical demands. First, they had to ensure their members felt profoundly seen, supported, and re-inspired by their vital calling despite deteriorating system morale. Second, they needed a compelling visual strategy that would build strong emotional connections with the public and key political decision-makers to champion healthcare reform and foster a welcoming environment for recruitment and enrollment.
Our Approach
We teamed up with NBNU to develop a highly authentic, anthemic advocacy campaign focused on re-energizing the value of the nursing profession.
Humanizing the Frontlines: Rather than relying on actors or clinical data, we filmed vignettes featuring real New Brunswick nurses, capturing their raw passion, day-to-day dedication, and the human realities of provincial patient care.
Crafting a Disruptive Narrative: We intentionally shifted away from typical, fear-based media messaging that only highlights a broken system. Instead, we engineered an inspiring, pride-focused campaign built around an anthemic voiceover and a simple, poignant question: “Who Needs a Nurse?”—reminding audiences that the answer is everyone.
Omnichannel Public Outreach: We optimized the final visual assets into a versatile media suite designed to maximize public reach. This included full-length web videos, emotionally driven broadcast PSAs, targeted social media shorts for Instagram and Facebook, and static digital assets optimized to drive traffic to a dedicated campaign microsite.
At a time of crisis, our province needs Nurses more than ever. With the healthcare sector struggling to gain talent, we were thrilled at the opportunity to show the bright side of nursing."
The Impact
The campaign delivered a powerful, disruptive wave of positivity that resonated deeply across the province and the country. By prioritizing member pride and plain-language emotional storytelling over cold statistics, the video assets comfortably exceeded engagement targets and received widespread acclaim from other nurses' unions across Canada. Crucially, the campaign achieved its core objective: NBNU members expressed feeling genuinely represented, valued, and empowered by the materials. By humanizing the nursing crisis and shifting public sentiment from defeatism to profound respect, our work gave NBNU an invaluable advocacy tool to keep healthcare reform at the top of the government's agenda.
