CASE STUDY
Coaching Association of Canada
The Mental Health and Sport Resource Hub campaign
STRATEGIC PROMOTIONAL PLAN
The Client
The Coaching Association of Canada unites stakeholders and partners in its commitment to raising the skills and stature of coaches, and ultimately expanding their reach and influence. Through its programs, the CAC empowers coaches with knowledge and skills, promotes ethics, fosters positive attitudes, builds competence, and increases the credibility and recognition of coaches.
The CAC aims to enhance the experiences of all athletes and participants in Canada through quality coaching. They foster this through key pillars of coaching leadership and sustainable coaching education. Their coach development supports coaches from grassroots, to professional levels and beyond.
The Situation
Studies have shown that a significant percentage of children and adolescents in Canada, ranging from 40% to 48%, experienced mental health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many children and youth with mental health-related issues do not seek formal help. Young people in remote or rural areas face a particular risk due to a lack of mental health support services.
Individuals from racialized, Indigenous, and remote populations, newcomers to Canada, members of the Armed Forces, and those in school settings, have been traditionally underserved with access to mental health resources. Research suggests that coaches in these communities can play a role in promoting positive athlete and participant mental health. But many coaches lack the necessary knowledge in this area. Empowering them with knowledge, competency, and the belief that mental health promotion, prevention, and early intervention are part of their role can support better mental health outcomes for their athletes and themselves.
To achieve this outcome, with financial support from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the CAC launched the Mental Health and Sport Resource Hub. Accurate Creative was brought on board as their strategic marketing partner to generate awareness of the Hub with a robust digital and traditional media marketing campaign reaching audiences from coast to coast to coast.
Challenges
The biggest challenge of this project, outside of the scope of the content and nature of the campaign itself, was the time to market (TTM).
On October 22, 2022, CAC greenlit the project with a hard campaign start set for February 16, 2023. With less than 4 months TTM, Accurate developed the brand from conception to full implementation, including asset creation, marketing strategies, advertising allocation and full execution and management of the campaign.
The Objectives
The campaign has two primary objectives, with actions and measurable outputs.
Objective 1: Understanding Audiences
The Hub offers coaches, athletes and sport participants across Canada a gateway to important mental health resources, particularly for those in underserved communities. Understanding who these individuals are, the most appropriate means of communicating with them, and what their core values, goals, motivations, and challenges are were of paramount importance. The outcome of the research laid the foundation for the development of unique marketing personas for each of the six primary audiences.
Objective 2: Promoting the Hub
Generating awareness and promoting the newly built website was the second objective. The goal was to leverage the persona research to develop a brand for the Hub, marketing collateral, and high-intensity advertising that would resonate with audiences, driving traffic to the website while creating widespread awareness of the resource.
The Approach
Accurate Creative’s outreach campaign aimed to raise awareness about the Mental Health and Sport Resource Hub platform and the importance of mental health in sports with primary and secondary audiences.
1. Development of Marketing Personas
Accurate realized that a conventional approach to marketing persona development wouldn’t suit the CAC’s extensive campaign. Marketing personas typically focus on specific individuals, outlining their values, goals, motivations, challenges, and pressures that shape their decision-making. However, for the CAC’s Mental Health in Sport campaign, the audience consisted of diverse individuals spanning various backgrounds, ages, and levels of sports involvement. To address this, Accurate devised “group personas” to ensure their marketing strategies encompassed a broader perspective.
2. Key Message Development
Accurate developed content that served as a subject matter resource map for marketing activities around promoting the Mental Health and Sport Resource Hub. This content map gave the Hub its brand voice expressed through a succinct value proposition, campaign tagline, inspirational statements, call-to-action statements, and key message themes.
3. Campaign Brand Development
The cornerstone of the Mental Health and Sport Resource Hub brand development was the Mental Health is Our Sport logo. The logo and overarching brand design system incorporate visual elements that speak to breaking down the stigma associated with mental health in sport. The visuals promote starting conversations, developing understanding, finding solutions to mental health challenges through the Hub’s resources, and creating better health outcomes for all.
4. Creative Assets Development
Accurate developed a brand guide and logo assets, multiple videos, exhibit graphics, business cards, posters, traditional ads, digital ads, lanyards, marketing toolkit, stickers, pins, PowerPoint decks, promotional items, radio commercials, website designs, social media templates, MS Word templates, wristbands and other assets. To date, Accurate has developed over 380 creative assets for this campaign.
5. Marketing Strategy Phase 1
The primary goal of Phase 1 was to generate awareness of the new Mental Health and Resource Hub. Phase 1’s outreach tactics included a national digital advertising campaign through the online digital display network and social media platforms, complemented by limited traditional advertising, as well as radio and print public service announcements.
RESULTS
Phase 1
February 16–March 31, 2023
This campaign was segmented and targeted to the six marketing personas developed at the outset of the project. Dozens of advertisement variants were used across social media and the digital display network. Every ad created conversions that drove audiences to the same spot—the MHiS Hub—allowing for a very direct metric to measure engagement.
7. Ongoing Collaboration
Accurate Creative coordinated with three contractor agencies with separate yet linked responsibilities specific to marketing strategies, tactics, and deliverables related to Event Management, Public Relations and Digital Advertising Delivery.
