Celebrating Coin-Worthy Moments in Canadian History | Clapboard Ad Archive

A History of Making Change

Description

Launched in Canada in October 2021, the campaign "A History of Making Change" for The Royal Canadian Mint, crafted by McCann, creatively celebrates pivotal moments in Canadian history through the medium of film. This campaign strategically uses innovative and engaging storytelling to inspire Canadians to deepen their connection with the nation’s heritage by spotlighting two significant historical events immortalized on newly minted coins. One featured story commemorates the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin, recognized as Canada’s monumental gift to the world that revolutionized diabetes treatment and saved millions of lives. Through the launch of the new toonie honoring Banting, Best, Collip, and Macleod, the campaign effectively brings history to life by integrating photography, visual effects, and cinemagraph techniques that captivate the audience and generate excitement around these coin-worthy moments. Beyond the initial film assets, the storytelling extends through diverse activations, where the narratives are reimagined and adapted for modern platforms and relevant contemporary contexts, further engaging the public and encouraging a deeper appreciation of Canada’s contributions to global history. This campaign not only highlights the artistic craftsmanship of the coins but also reinforces The Royal Canadian Mint’s role as a custodian of Canadian heritage, using multi-dimensional storytelling methods to foster national pride and educational interest through an innovative blend of visual artistry and historical homage.

Credits

Client

The Royal Canadian Mint

Agency

McCann

Executive Creative Director

Josh Stein, Dave Roberts

Creative Director

Robert Trickey, Chris Duffett, David Whiteson, Mark Dolynskyj

Strategic Planner

Badr El Fekkak, Jeremy Singer

Producer

Jacqueline Bellmore, Liliane Clune, Tom Nesbitt, John Stevancec, Andrew Tavare, Maggie Blouin Pearl

Account Management

Céline Duval, Anick Tanguay

Senior Manager

Virginia Gaffney

Program Manager Marketing

Leo Haque

Photographer

Dave Delnea

Casting

Milo Casting

Wardrobe

Maeve McKee

Hair

More like this

Wake the F**K Up - Obama | Clapboard Ad Archive

Wake the F**K Up is a professional campaign launched by the Obama brand in the United States across the government market category in 2012, designed as a sharp jolt to political passivity and apathy. Anchored by Samuel L. Jackson’s unmistakable presence, the film creative cuts with singular force through a saturated pre-election media landscape, capitalizing on Jackson’s public persona to convey urgency, directness, and a no-excuses call to voter participation. With its very title and conceit built around Jackson performing as himself, the campaign leverages what Clapboard’s taxonomy defines as FORMAT#8—Ongoing Characters or Celebrities—positioning Jackson not simply as a recognizable face but as the campaign’s entire rhetorical mechanism. The agency’s insight is immediately apparent: celebrity endorsement at its most explicit can move beyond passive association and escalate to embodied action when the creative risk is calibrated precisely to the moment. The single long-form film deploys irreverence and candor, addressing the electorate in direct language and shattering the conventional, often anodyne tone of political communications. By deliberately leaning into networked, reaction-driven culture, Wake the F**K Up achieved remarkable resonance—garnering more than 2.1 million digital views and stimulating active user response across platforms at a pivotal time for political engagement. The unapologetically NSFW headline is neither provocative for provocation’s sake nor a mere viral gesture; instead, it serves as a brand-aligned rallying cry, breaking the fourth wall between campaign narratives and real-world action, and tapping into the cultural zeitgeist with both confidence and self-awareness. The Obama brand, often seen as cerebral in its broader communications, here takes a calculated risk by enlisting blockbuster-level celebrity to deliver messaging with no filtration, matching the electorate’s heightened emotional stakes with creative that is equally unfiltered. Within the government market category and election-year communications, this campaign stands as a reference point for the potency of leveraging celebrity voice, not just for borrowed reach but as an inseparable part of creative strategy. Clapboard rates this 82/100. In using personality as the message, Wake the F**K Up demonstrates how truly integrating celebrity into the creative core—rather than just as an add-on—can drive unprecedented urgency and engagement where it matters most.

Campaign Proposition

The Royal Canadian Mint’s campaign, "A History of Making Change," leverages the nation’s rich historical milestones to reinforce the brand’s role as a custodian and storyteller of Canadian heritage. By commemorating pivotal moments through limited-edition coins, the Mint positions itself as more than a currency producer; it becomes a tangible link to Canada’s defining contributions to the world. The campaign promises a meaningful connection to the past, inviting audiences to appreciate the cultural and historical significance embedded in everyday currency. Strategically, the campaign taps into a deep-seated national pride and curiosity about Canada’s place in global history. By focusing on two key historical breakthroughs—such as the discovery of insulin—the initiative transforms coins into storytelling devices, making historical education accessible and engaging. The use of innovative media techniques like photography, visual effects, and cinemagraphs serves to captivate viewers’ attention and enhance emotional resonance, encouraging audiences to see coins as more than mere objects of transaction but as artifacts celebrating Canadian achievement. Extending beyond traditional media, the campaign adapts historical narratives to contemporary digital platforms, ensuring relevance and engagement across demographic segments, particularly younger audiences familiar with dynamic online content. This blended approach aligns with the Mint’s government mandate, aiming not only to inform but also to inspire civic pride and awareness through culturally resonant storytelling.

Creative Device

FORMAT#11 UNIQUE PERSONALITY PROPERTY — Highlights a unique feature, origin, or distinctive product identity. This campaign best fits FORMAT#11, as it centers on the distinctiveness and cultural significance of commemorative coins by the Royal Canadian Mint. Rather than showcasing a problem/solution arc or a fictional storyline, the campaign leverages documentary-style storytelling to spotlight the unique origin and historical relevance behind each coin launch—specifically, the 100th anniversary of insulin’s discovery. Through innovative visuals and historical recreations, it builds intrigue around the Mint’s exclusive role in memorializing nation-shaping moments, thus emphasizing the unique personality and heritage embedded within the product itself. ADVERTISING FORMATS EXPLAINED: https://www.clapboard.com/blog/branding-and-advertising/brand-strategy/12-advertising-creative-formats

Lucky for life - Minnesota State Lottery | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Lucky for life - Minnesota State Lottery | Clapboard Ad Archive

Lucky for Life from the Minnesota State Lottery is a vivid lesson in the evolving stakes of state-sponsored gaming communications, where relevance with younger audiences can no longer be assumed and creative bravery is demanded. Tasked in 2017 with reversing waning youth engagement, brand partner Periscope rewrote the house rules—delivering a campaign that fuses the exuberance of contemporary rap video culture with an unabashedly local, Midwestern twist. At the center of this singular TV spot is Grandma Margie, whose newfound wealth from the Lucky for Life game—offering up to $1,000 a day for life—translates into custom-knit sweaters, chunky jewelry, and interiors more hip-hop mansion than Northwoods cabin. By casting an older protagonist in a role typically reserved for younger stars and pairing her with a cast of energetic whippersnappers, the creative team zags where the category traditionally zigs, using humor and cultural incongruity to reposition the Minnesota State Lottery as a lifestyle gateway rather than a gilded dead end. What Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#12—Parody or Borrowed Format, the campaign leverages all the recognizable tropes of a hip-hop video—flash, bravado, thumping custom song—recontextualized within an unmistakably Midwestern setting. This approach not only subverts genre expectations but also delivers the message: true fortune is not just about the jackpot, but about living louder, together, and without apology. Through its deft integration of music, parody, and relatable family dynamics, the spot achieves memorability and virality potential that typical testimonials or winner montages lack, steering viewers to the Minnesota Lottery website and official channels while staking a claim as part of local and digital culture. For a government category that is often restricted by regulation and saddled with legacy creative, this is a statement of renewed ambition, seeking to spark engagement where indifference has settled in. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. As generational habits around gambling and games of chance shift, Lucky for Life signals how blending audacious parody with hyperlocal nuance can act as a reset button for a dusty product set and an aging brand image.

I Got Love - Illinois Cares for Kids | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

I Got Love - Illinois Cares for Kids | Clapboard Ad Archive

I Got Love is Illinois Cares for Kids’ inaugural statewide campaign that spotlights affordable early childhood education and care as a vital, accessible resource for families across Illinois, conceived and executed by Chicago’s commerce-driven agency 1o8. Anchored by a charming animated video that reinterprets Nat King Cole’s classic song I Got Love with the voices and talents of local artists and musicians, the campaign eschews traditional narrative storytelling for a FORMAT#9—Symbolize the Benefit approach, using music and animation as universal symbols of love, community, and nurturing support. This creative choice elevates the emotional resonance of early childhood care beyond functional benefits to emphasize the intangible yet essential value of love and shared responsibility in child development. Under the official endorsement of Governor J. B. Pritzker’s office, Illinois Cares for Kids positions itself as a comprehensive hub for parents, grandparents, caretakers, teachers, and childcare providers, making the campaign not only a public service announcement but also a culturally grounded rallying call that reflects Illinois’ diverse creative community. The campaign’s media strategy is meticulously layered, deploying online video, connected TV, local broadcast, streaming audio, digital out-of-home, social, and search channels to ensure broad yet targeted reach among families and stakeholders in early childhood education. Garnering over 1.9 million views, the campaign successfully cultivates awareness and trust through a warm, inclusive tone that transcends typical government messaging, while its integration of local creative talent adds authenticity and regional relevance rarely seen in the category. The campaign’s 71/100 Clapboard Campaign Score reflects its solid creative execution and strategic alignment within the government and education market category. I Got Love matters to the advertising industry because it demonstrates how government campaigns can harness cultural capital and symbolic storytelling to create emotionally compelling, community-rooted narratives that shift public perception and engagement around essential social services.

Sort the waste and save the earth - Latvian Green Point | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Sort the waste and save the earth - Latvian Green Point | Clapboard Ad Archive

Latvian Green Point’s Sort the Waste and Save the Earth campaign, developed by MAGIC for the government market in Year 2023, takes a refreshingly unconventional approach to environmental communications by framing Latvia’s ongoing struggle with proper waste sorting through the lens of a classic alien abduction narrative. Instead of dwelling on guilt or abstract statistics, the campaign deploys humor and pop culture to make its point: extraterrestrials land, abduct an unsuspecting earthling as they take out their rubbish, but promptly shift their fascination from their captive to the trash bag, picking apart its unsorted, perplexing contents. This outsider’s perspective, hilariously mimicked with familiar science-fiction tropes, turns the spotlight on human self-sabotage, with the aliens concluding that humanity poses a threat not to the universe, but to itself through its mismanaged waste. What Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#12—Parody or Borrowed Format—underpins the work’s creative strategy, allowing the message to sidestep earnest lecturing for a satirical, narrative-driven critique that is both accessible and memorable. The campaign’s digital execution leverages documentary and social experiment aesthetics, aligning tightly with Latvian Green Point’s longstanding educational mission and reinforcing the brand’s status as a credible authority striving to drive genuine behavioral change. By combining the agency’s high production values and adept storytelling—without recourse to finger-wagging—MAGIC successfully taps into recognizable genre motifs, using the alien encounter setup to reflect back the absurdity of unsorted household waste and nudge viewers toward self-recognition and action. Compared to the typical government sustainability messaging in Latvia, often led by ZAAO’s pragmatic community focus, the Environmental Protection Fund’s systemic interventions, or Clean Latvia’s volunteer-driven action, this campaign is distinguished by its willingness to borrow from entertainment and parody to reframe personal responsibility as a matter of galactic curiosity and concern. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. For a category prone to sincerity and excess earnestness, MAGIC’s irreverent take signals to the industry the enduring power of genre parody to destabilize complacency and reshape sustainable behavior narratives.

Let's have the Consent Conversation - Department of Justice | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Let's have the Consent Conversation - Department of Justice | Clapboard Ad Archive

Let’s have the Consent Conversation is the defining film campaign for Ireland’s Department of Justice, a government-led effort brought to life by agency Javelin to mainstream the understanding that conversations about consent belong in the everyday, not just crisis moments or classroom talks. Operating in the Public Utility sector and launched in 2023, the campaign departs from the expected shock or dramatization tactics, instead leaning into a narrative approach that symbolically represents the social and emotional complexity of navigating consent. This strategic decision sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem taxonomy, focusing less on specific scenarios and more on the universal hurdle: starting the conversation itself. The film eschews literal depictions of miscommunication or conflict in favor of recurring motifs and analogies designed to lower the perceived barriers to speaking up, no matter the context or relationship dynamic. Javelin’s work captures the Department of Justice’s mission to foster safer communities by equipping viewers with a narrative that normalizes dialogue and positions respect for personal boundaries as a shared societal responsibility. The campaign acknowledges Ireland’s broader landscape of public service messaging—from An Garda Síochána’s attention to safety through to the Health Service Executive’s welfare mandates—while marking distinct territory in its focus on emotional resonance as a tool for behavioral change. Framed for a digitally literate public attuned to social issues, Let’s have the Consent Conversation seeks to shape culture incrementally, emphasizing that continuous engagement and ongoing dialogue are more effective than one-off interventions. The combination of government authority, inclusive tone, and a creative format rooted in metaphor offers a modern template for public awareness that both challenges stigma and repositions personal agency as a collective good. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. As the conversation around consent continues to evolve across government, education, and community sectors, this campaign signals a critical shift toward narrative-driven, culturally embedded strategies that position dialogue itself as an actionable act of change.

Testing trust - Socialdemokratiet | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Testing trust - Socialdemokratiet | Clapboard Ad Archive

Testing trust, the 2017 campaign from Socialdemokratiet and agency Another, delivers a direct and thought-provoking intervention into the public interest and government sector by challenging prevailing global narratives of eroding social faith through a distinctly Danish lens. At its core, the campaign sets out to examine whether Denmark’s defining societal characteristic — trust — remains as robust in the present as in the past, positioning Socialdemokratiet, the architects of the nation’s welfare model, as both the steward and validator of this intangible yet foundational value. Crafted as a documentary-style social experiment and anchored in what Clapboard’s taxonomy designates as FORMAT#1—Demonstration, the creative device does not simply claim that trust holds Denmark together; it constructs unscripted, real-life scenarios that invite Danes to reveal, live, whether this trust endures under everyday social pressures. The work stands apart from the standard repertoire of narrated manifestos or issue-driven dramatizations, aligning instead with a transparent, observational approach that hands agency to its participants, relying on their interactions to articulate the benefits and cohesion provided by Denmark’s welfare society. This creative strategy allows the campaign to operate not as a lecture on values but as a mirror for self-examination, urging viewers to confront their own attitudes in an environment that is both politically relevant and culturally resonant. Eschewing fictionalization or the gloss of celebrity endorsement, the campaign’s commitment to authenticity is amplified by its experiential framework, which draws a sharp contrast between Denmark’s persistent social trust and the broader, media-fueled sentiment of contemporary insecurity. By foregrounding trust as the shared social currency that transcends political alignment and personal background, Socialdemokratiet leverages the campaign not only to reinforce its own legacy as a unifying and stabilizing force in Danish politics but also to assert the continued relevance of welfare and social unity in turbulent times. The choice to provide English subtitles extends the narrative of Danish trust to an international audience, subtly offering Denmark’s model as both an exception and an aspiration in an era of fractured public confidence. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This campaign matter to the industry because it signals a shift toward directly demonstrating societal values rather than asserting them rhetorically, setting a new bar for authenticity and engagement in public interest communications.

One Degree That Matters - Energy Savings Trust | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

One Degree That Matters - Energy Savings Trust | Clapboard Ad Archive

One Degree That Matters is a sharply targeted digital campaign crafted by the University of Gloucestershire for the Energy Savings Trust in 2019, addressing the critical issue of global warming through the lens of a youthful UK university student audience aged 18 to 24. Positioned within the government market category and the public interest sector, the campaign leverages Snapchat’s dynamic platform to engage a demographic defined by ephemeral, authentic social content consumption. Rather than depicting environmental degradation literally, the campaign employs what Clapboard’s taxonomy identifies as FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem—using the concept of a single degree of global temperature increase as a potent metaphor for the tipping point at which climate damage escalates dramatically. This symbolic approach transforms an abstract scientific fact into a tangible, emotionally resonant narrative, encouraging young viewers to grasp how incremental environmental shifts can cascade into significant planetary consequences. The campaign’s singular media asset functions as a social experiment or documentary-style piece designed to provoke reflection and conversation, harnessing Snapchat’s immediacy and youth appeal to foster a sense of individual and collective responsibility toward energy saving and sustainability. By aligning the message with the digital habits of its target audience, the Energy Savings Trust and University of Gloucestershire avoid preaching or data overload, instead inviting engagement through relatable, shareable content that underscores the urgency of climate action without resorting to alarmism. This strategic use of digital storytelling not only reinforces the Energy Savings Trust’s role as an authoritative and proactive entity within environmental stewardship but also exemplifies how government-backed campaigns can innovate in reaching younger generations on platforms where their attention is most captive. The campaign earns 60/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. One Degree That Matters matters to the industry because it demonstrates how symbolic storytelling through emerging social media formats can mobilize young audiences around complex public interest issues when executed with precision and cultural relevance.