President's Choice and John St. launched PC Eat Together Dreams in Canada in 2018, a public interest film grounded in communal dining and emotional
ARCHIVEPresident's Choice Turns the Family Table Into a Brand Purpose Statement
PC Eat Together – Dreams is a Canadian public interest film created by John St. for President's Choice, published in December 2018, that uses communal dining as an emotional platform to communicate that shared meals are where human connection endures regardless of where life takes people.
President's Choice is the flagship private-label food brand of Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest grocery retailer. Rather than anchoring the campaign to products or price, the December 2018 film pursues brand purpose through narrative, positioning the dinner table as a universal constant amid the movement and change of modern life. The core message — "No matter where life takes you, eating together at the table is the best place to be" — frames the brand not as a purveyor of groceries but as a custodian of a social ritual. That distinction separates PC Eat Together – Dreams from conventional retail advertising and places it firmly within the public interest tradition of brand communication.
The campaign extended a platform that President's Choice had introduced in 2017, when an initial Eat Together execution generated more than 11 million views and 27,000 shares in its online run, according to canadiangrocer.com. The December 2018 Dreams film deepened that territory, building on the emotional equity already established across the Canadian market. John St., the Toronto-based creative agency, developed the campaign alongside media agency Dentsu and public relations agency Citizen Relations, forming an integrated team suited to the platform's ambitions. The single film asset carries the full weight of the campaign's argument — a deliberate creative economy that relies on the persuasive force of story and image rather than media volume.
Loblaw Companies Limited held an estimated 38.6 percent share of the Canadian grocery retail market, according to studocu.com, making President's Choice the private-label brand with the broadest household penetration in the country. That scale created both an opportunity and a strategic obligation: a brand present in nearly every Canadian kitchen could speak to something larger than any single product category. The Eat Together platform, developed with John St. and first activated in 2017, answered that obligation by anchoring President's Choice to the social and emotional function of food rather than its transactional value.
The strategic insight was empirically grounded. According to Newswire Ca, 75 percent of working Canadians surveyed said that eating together improves communication within families and households. That figure gave the creative team a documented cultural tension to resolve: shared meals were widely valued yet increasingly difficult to sustain amid the competing pressures of modern Canadian life. By making that tension the subject of its advertising, President's Choice stepped into a space that competitors had largely left unoccupied. Costco Canada held approximately 10 percent of food-sales share and Walmart Canada approximately 7 percent, according to studocu.com — both retailers whose advertising in the grocery category defaults to value and assortment rather than emotional narrative. The decision by President's Choice and John St. to pursue a public interest register, rather than promotional mechanics, was therefore a deliberate act of competitive differentiation, one that traded short-term persuasion for longer-term brand equity.
The creative execution of PC Eat Together – Dreams rests on a single, foundational licensing decision. Cheryl Grishkewich, Vice President of Marketing at President's Choice, secured approval from the Alan Watts Foundation to use Watts' recorded lecture The Dream of Life as the film's voiceover, according to Little Black Book. That choice gives the spot a philosophical register unusual in grocery advertising — Watts' voice carries the film's central proposition that life's journey is enriched, not despite, but because of the moments spent at a shared table. The decision to anchor a retail brand's narrative in a mid-twentieth-century philosopher's recorded words is itself an act of creative confidence, one that signals the campaign's ambition to operate as culture rather than commerce.
Cher Campbell served as Executive Creative Director on the project, with Dorota Pankowska as Art Director and Kohl Forsberg as Associate Creative Director and Copywriter, according to adsoftheworld.com. Monika Ghobrial produced for the agency. The film was directed by Reynald Gresset and produced by Revolver Films, with Luc Frappier serving as Executive Producer, according to lbbonline.com. The combination of Gresset's direction and the Watts voiceover creates a tonal gravity that few Canadian grocery campaigns have attempted. Visually, the film moves through images of families and individuals across different stages of life and different corners of the country, using the table as a recurring structural anchor. The narrative device is elegant: life disperses people outward, and the table draws them back. That rhythm sustains emotional engagement across the film's duration without requiring a product demonstration or a price point.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for PC Eat Together – Dreams is publicly available at the individual film level, and no confirmed award wins for this specific execution appear across the Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC databases. The 2019 Effie Awards Canada journal contains a case study for the broader PC Eat Together initiative, though it does not establish a specific award win for the Dreams film, according to that source.
At the platform level, the results documented for the wider Eat Together initiative are meaningful. More than 250,000 Canadians participated in Eat Together activities culminating on June 22, 2018, according to newswire.ca. Brand trust and brand equity scores for President's Choice increased significantly following the campaign's activation, though precise percentage-point changes were not disclosed in available sources, per the 2019 Effie Awards Canada journal. The 2017 Eat Together predecessor generated more than 11 million views and 27,000 shares online, according to canadiangrocer.com, establishing the audience appetite that the Dreams film was designed to deepen.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness argument rests on its willingness to subordinate product logic to emotional narrative. For a private-label brand competing on value, the choice to invest in public interest storytelling signals a mature understanding of how brand equity is built over time. Clapboard scores PC Eat Together – Dreams at 63 out of 100, a rating that reflects the film's genuine creative ambition and cultural attunement while acknowledging that its emotional register, though compelling, stops short of the executional precision that defines the highest tier of purpose-driven advertising.
PC Eat Together – Dreams is a public interest film created by John St. for President's Choice and published in Canada in December 2018. It uses Alan Watts' recorded voice and communal dining imagery to argue that the shared table remains the best place to be, no matter where life leads a person.
John St., a Toronto-based creative agency, created PC Eat Together – Dreams in 2018. Cher Campbell was Executive Creative Director, Dorota Pankowska was Art Director, and Kohl Forsberg served as Associate Creative Director and Copywriter. Reynald Gresset directed the film, which was produced by Revolver Films, according to lbbonline.com.
President's Choice used Alan Watts' The Dream of Life recording to give the film philosophical weight beyond typical grocery advertising. Cheryl Grishkewich, Vice President of Marketing at President's Choice, secured permission from the Alan Watts Foundation, according to lbbonline.com. The voiceover frames communal dining as a profound human constant.
The broader Eat Together platform engaged more than 250,000 Canadians in communal dining activities culminating June 22, 2018, according to newswire.ca. Brand trust and equity scores for President's Choice increased significantly, per the 2019 Effie Awards Canada journal, though specific percentage-point changes were not publicly disclosed. The 2017 predecessor exceeded 11 million online views, according to canadiangrocer.com.
No confirmed award wins for PC Eat Together – Dreams appear in the Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC databases. The 2019 Effie Awards Canada journal documents the broader PC Eat Together initiative but does not record a specific award for the Dreams film, according to that publication.
Clapboard rates PC Eat Together – Dreams at 63 out of 100. The score reflects the film's genuine creative ambition and its culturally attuned use of narrative in a public interest context, while noting that its emotional execution falls short of the precision that defines the highest tier of purpose-driven Canadian advertising.
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