Garde-Manger Pour Tous gives new meaning to holiday classics

Garde-Manger Pour Tous, the NFP serving 3,000 underprivileged Montreal-area youth, has partnered with Cossette and Cossette Media to raise public awareness around the fight against child poverty and malnutrition this holidays.

To reflect the daily realities of children living with food insecurity, the campaign puts a meaningful twist on a Christmas tradition: the Advent calendar. Appearing on outdoor signage, online and social networks, this version of the calendar features the usual doors, but while some open to reveal a chocolate, others only reveal an empty space—a nod to the organization’s tagline since 2014, “Help Us Fill the Emptiness.” The three colourful, festive designs used in the campaign were created in conjunction with local illustrators Geneviève Bigué, LaCharbonne and maxprevo.

In addition to the ad campaign, over 100 copies of the Advent calendar were handed out to Quebecois influencers and across the charity’s and the agency’s networks. “The idea here is that the item itself acts as the message. The calendars become actual awareness-raising tools for the cause as well as Garde-Manger Pour Tous’s mission,” explained Anne-Claude Chénier, Vice-President of Creative Advertising at Cossette. 

Creative media – 0 Times a Day

In keeping with the spirit of the campaign, Cossette Media partnered with highly popular Quebec-based recipe blog 3 fois par jour. Today, visitors to the site will notice a new, impactful logo, 0 fois par jour (0 Times a Day), as well as empty plates and recipe cards in GMPT colours. This creative media approach allowed the Garde-Manger to intercept visitors to the website at the exact moment they were planning their holiday menus.

Garde-Manger Pour Tous also received support from media partners like Astral Media, Bell Media, La Presse, OBOX., Outfront, Ricardo Media, and UB Media.