Scouts Canada has launched a new print and online advertising campaign featuring well-known Canadians who participated in the Scouts program as youths.
The national campaign includes print ads with old photographs of luminaries such as hat inventor Alex Tilley and Canada AM host Seamus O’Regan in their Scouts uniform. Copy running underneath and above the images link each personality with the skills and experience they obtained in the program. The Tilley ad, for example, suggests that the knots the hat-maker uses in his product design are similar to the knots young Scouts learn how to tie.
The Tilley ad also includes the copy, “Alex always loved adventure. He just wanted a better hat,” as well as the campaign tag line, “It Starts With Scouts.”
The campaign launched nationally last Saturday and includes English and French executions. Creative was developed by St. John’s-based shop Target Marketing and Communications, Scouts Canada’s agency of record.
Noel O’Dea, president and director of strategic and creative planning at Target, said the new initiative is geared to community leaders.
“This campaign is populated by Scouts who have grown up and become role models and leaders and been successful in their own lives,” said O’Dea. “Our goal is to demonstrate that a lot of people have been influenced in their personal and social development by the experiences they’ve had in Scouts.”
The campaign follows a series of Scouts Canada recruitment ads that ran last fall. That work, also created by Target, depicted outdoor scenes and targeted parents.
O’Dea said both campaigns were part of an overdue focus on branding by his client.
“There has not been any real effort by Scouts to fill their own brand vessel with meaning over the years, and as a result nobody’s been telling their story,” O’Dea said.
Target also helped to coordinate the recent redesign of the Scouts uniform by Joe Fresh. The new uniforms were unveiled last week.
