The IGA grocery store chain has been supporting the Fondation Charles-Bruneau for over 17 years and raising funds for cancer research by selling Tough Cookies temporary tattoos since 2019. This year’s challenge was to reimagine our successful Tough Cookies initiative and keep donations flowing at IGA cash registers.

The communication objectives were to:

Raise consumer awareness about the cause and encourage people to donate

Strengthen the association between IGA, its merchants and the Fondation Charles-Bruneau

Maintain brand appreciation (sympathetic capital from Quebecers) and strengthen the banner's perception of community involvement

The business objective was to:

Collect $450,000 in donations from all sources (promotional item sales, participating product sales, cash donations)

What began as temporary tattoos inspired by the challenges of children battling cancer has become a creative and innovative donation project.

This year, IGA launched TOUGH COOKIES: THE GAME, a mobile game imagined entirely by kids who have beat cancer. The children helped dream up everything from the characters to the decor. The goal of the game is inspired by the reality faced by sick children who lose their sense of taste: fight to help rescue the Tongue and get back the four tastes—Sweet, Salty, Sour and Bitter— that have been bewitched by Umami, the jealous fifth taste.

Fundraising for charities has become increasingly difficult in the past two years with smaller donations on the rise. Temporary tattoos have been the main vehicle of fundraising since the 2019, but this year we had to find a creative idea to drive more donations. IGA shook things up by building on the strengths of the concept and taking it up a level without losing the essence of the original winning formula.

In Quebec, 1 in 400 children is diagnosed with cancer before age 15, requiring hospitalization and treatment. Children undergoing chemotherapy often lose their sense of taste and and their appetite, which impacts their ability to fight the disease. This was the starting point of the campaign becauseIGA focuses on celebrating the joy that food brings.

With this in mind, IGA placed full creative power in the hands of children, challenging them to create a video game.

Children in remission were tasked with crafting every element of the game based on the five tastes: The heroes, the worlds, the villain, and even the sound effects. Once all the characters were created, they became a video game in just 6 weeks! Then they made into temporary tattoos sold at IGA.

To access the game, players purchased the temporary tattoo versions of the characters at IGA and scanned them. The more tattoos they collected, the more characters they unlocked and the more money was raised for the foundation. This reimagined fundraising seamlessly integrated the tattoos and amplified their impact while empowering young cancer survivors.

An arcade version of the game was created and installed in children’s hospitals to inspire the future Tough Cookies to fight for years to come. The arcade’s goal was to help relieve stress and bring joy to children and parents during chemotherapy treatments.

The video game was key to unlocking the next level of the fundraising campaign and is the reason why this year's campaign was such a success, for the little ones as well as the grown-ups, who can’t resist its nostalgic Pixel Art look.

In 3 weeks, 55,000 temporary tattoos were sold at IGA. The campaign reached - and exceeded its financial goal, raising close to $500,000 for cancer research, an increase of nearly 11% compared to 2021. The game also attracted a significant amount of traffic with more than 20,000 players since its launch, 4,036 levels completed and an average engagement time of 10 minutes and 5 seconds.

This year's campaign allowed us to restore our pre-pandemic donation levels and match 2020, our best year ever.

What cannot be quantified is that we helped hundreds of children regain their appetites to fight for years to come.