Attempting to counteract a wave of negative publicity in which the Harper government has portrayed it as a foreign-financed organization seeking to disrupt a prominent energy development project, Vancouver-based charity Tides Canada has launched a new awareness campaign.
The campaign touts Tides Canada’s work furthering social and environmental causes, and is accompanied by a microsite that provides detailed accounting of its grant recipients and international donations, as well as an interactive graphic profiling its community of donors.
The new “Strange Bedfellows” campaign from Vancouver agency Cause + Affect is intended to showcase the benefits that can occur when so-called “diverse interests” come together to solve environmental and social problems.
A 90-second video on TidesCanada.org begins with a woman waking up, disoriented, in a man’s bedroom. As the spot progresses, viewers see indications that he is dedicated to various social and environmental causes (posters promoting local food and urging the prevention of clear-cut logging), and that the woman comes from a business background.
After quietly exiting from the home, the woman reconsiders and texts the man to say it was fun and they should get together again. He agrees and thanks Tides Canada for bringing them together. A super reads “Tide Canada. We bring together strange bedfellows,” followed by the organization’s positioning statement: “Uncommon solutions for the common good.”
Tides Canada vice-president Sarah Goodman said the organization tested several different creative concepts, but was inspired by one of its most successful endeavours – bringing together disparate groups including environmental organizations, forestry companies and B.C. First Nations to save a swath of temperate rainforest in B.C. from clear-cut logging.
“Bringing strange bedfellows together is what we do,” said Goodman. “We’ve used that language in the past, but just in an offhand reference. This is the first time we’ve used it in a big way.
“It’s our effort to underscore how powerful it is when diverse interests come together to solve complex social and environmental issues,” said Goodman. “It was a way for us to put forward our brand in an edgy, sophisticated way.”
The video is being seeded through social media channels, she said.
Established in 2000, Tides Canada has offices in Vancouver and Toronto. The organization operates both a grant-making foundation known as the Tides Canada Foundation and a charity dedicated to environmental and social issues called Tides Canada Initiatives.
The organization has been at the forefront of a recent crackdown on foreign funding to charitable organizations by the Harper government, and has been accused of funneling foreign funds to green groups opposing the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. The 1,177-kilometre long pipeline would carry oil-sands bitumen from Edmonton to Kitimat, B.C.
According to its literature, Tides Canada received almost $10.9 million in foreign donations in 2011, an amount accounting for nearly half its total revenues. The organization acknowledged the amount of foreign funding was “higher than usual,” due to what it characterized as a “large grant” from the San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support marine planning and protect wild salmon in B.C.
“This is a new and different approach for us,” said Goodman. “There have been a lot of controversies around charities in general of late, and criticism from the federal government around the role of charities and some of these resource development debates.
“We wanted to step out in a way that really transcended those debates, put a different message on the table, and really took ownership of our brand,” added Goodman.
