1 Case Study: HatsForHope

#HatsForHope toques

In 2018, Canadian Public Relations firm Argyle Communication was faced with a challenge when asked to promote brain cancer awareness. Actually, two challenges. The first was that communication around brain cancer is complicated. Most people don’t know the difference between brain cancer and brain tumours, or the details around Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and most aggressive malignant brain tumour. The second is that cancer fundraising and awareness is a very cluttered space. There are many cancer awareness initiatives competing for audience attention, and it might be challenging to find space for the specific cause of brain cancer awareness.

Luckily, Argyle was up to the challenge and found an innovative solution. As they describe on their website, the firm took inspiration from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The key to success was the collaborative approach which leveraged a symbol that was already recognizable and present in the brain tumour community, the toque. Using the symbol of the hat as a key communication piece for the campaign, Argyle developed the #HatsForHope initiative. This expanded into an official Canadian awareness day after the team connected with supporters in the House of Commons. They then engaged influential Canadian celebrities to join the campaign by sharing images of themselves with #HatsForHope toques.

The impact of the campaign was impressive. Argyle reports that between Oct 1st to Oct 31st there were 1,888,000 impressions through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In addition, there were 3,666 website page visits (with 2,373 unique visitors) and the initiative received coverage from numerous media outlets for a total of 29 media stories. Perhaps most importantly, October 24th was declared Brain Cancer Awareness Day in Canada, thus ensuring much needed long-term attention on this important program.

This case study introduces us to just some of the important work that public relations practitioners do as they connect important messages with audiences in meaningful, strategic and lasting ways.

This figure depicts how complicated information about brain cancer was explained to audience. Audience struggles to understand this information and organization used the symbol of the hat as a key communication piece for the campaign. Audience connected symbol to brain tumor.
Figure 1.1 Using symbols as communication. This figure depicts how complicated information about brain cancer was explained to audience. Audience struggled to understand this information and organization used the symbol of the hat as a key communication piece for the campaign. Audience connected the symbol of toque to brain tumour.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Foundations of Public Relations: Canadian Edition Copyright © by Department of Communication Studies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book