The Challenge

The Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (OSAP) was set to announce major changes to the OSAP program and introduce a new grant program that could mean free tuition for qualifying students. The challenge was that students and their parents know OSAP to be a loan program for money that they will eventually have to pay back. For this reason, many students, particularly from disadvantaged homes, put off post-secondary education from fear of the financial inaccessibility.

The Insight

For parents and students alike, the weight of educational costs can present a heavy burden and get in the way of fulfilling a lifelong dream of post-secondary success. However, each experienced that weight in very different ways.

Parents were concerned that all of their hard work and perseverance in stewarding their child’s education would come undone due to the financial realities of post-secondary schooling.

For kids, there was a sense of duty and the associated burden of having to go to a post-secondary institution and emerge with significant debt.

The Plan

The ministry and Agency Cossette developed a campaign – “Everyone Deserves an Education” – with a two-pronged approach to targeting and an empathetic film message that sought to connect with parents and kids via an emotional tone and expression that each of them would appreciate.

For students, the team created a film featuring a student who is pestered and controlled by a monkey on his back, literally. The monkey scurries away when the student becomes aware of the new OSAP grant program, resolved by the line “get that monkey off of your back.” The theme of the monkey on the student’s back continued through social posts, video assets and in-school posters.

For the parents of those students, the team created a film that takes them on a journey of a mother and father who encourage and support their daughter, sometimes seen in real moments of exasperation and exhaustion throughout her childhood, with the dream of seeing her achieve great things. The film ends with the parents seeing their daughter graduate with the announcement of the OSAP grant program. Social, radio, digital and print ads supported the film.

Each of the programs were highly-targeted buys, both in terms of age and locale, to ensure maximum penetration in a specific set of families who would qualify for the new grant.

The Results

-52% increase in applications YOY with the same budget
-25% of students who were exposed to the program took action
-12% of the parents who were exposed to the program took action