Advertising & Design Club of Canada: AAAAA

After postponing their annual award show in 2020, the Advertising & Design Club of Canada has announced the return of their annual award show for 2021 under the theme ‘Unquarantine Your Creative’. The tongue-in-cheek call-for-entries campaign, created by Toronto’s Zulu Alpha Kilo, looks to celebrate all the amazing work that has emerged in 2020 despite all the challenges we’ve faced. The campaign includes both video and social content. The first video uses animated typography to highlight our common experiences over the past year, like office closures, toilet paper shortages and Zoom fatigue. A second video shows how, despite being physically contained this past year, our creativity was still able to run wild. The third video reinforces our banal daily stay-at-home routines, and how the repetition of each day has driven us to use creativity as an outlet to stay sane. Also included are a series of Instagram Stories about the places around our homes where creatives worked and created their best ideas during the pandemic - from directing radio ads in storage closets, to coming up with ideas while giving ourselves DIY haircuts through to presenting award-winning ideas on the toilet. The campaign almost didn’t happen. This past summer, Zulu Alpha Kilo was asked by the ADCC to help save the the club when it almost shut down because of the pandemic. In response, Zulu spearheaded the ADCC All-Nighter Webathon – a 24-hour, live-streamed fundraiser that showcased more than 30 unique sessions featuring industry luminaries from inside and outside of Canada, including David Droga, Alex Bogusky and Colleen Decourcy. The campaign galvanized the Canadian industry and helped raise the needed funds to save the 72-year-old non-profit.