In 2023, the North York General Hospital Foundation announced an ambitious goal to raise $32 million to build a new birthing center that matches the quality of care NYGH provides. This was especially ambitious given North York General is located in Canada’s most competitive fundraising city and most sought after donors.

Our task was to put North York General on the map as a leader in labour and delivery care, starting by growing our donor pool and generating a net new 1000 donation leads for the new birthing center. To do so, we needed a way to connect with parents who had an affiliation to our birthing centre by getting them to share their birthing experiences with us.

Playing off the iconic and quintessential pregnancy book: “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”, we created our own book that was designed to get parents and the media alike talking. We put out a call for submissions asking parents to tell us what they didn’t expect during their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. From there, we created a 150-page, beautifully-illustrated book full of all the taboo, unexpected, and overlooked things that other books (and parents) weren’t talking about. It was a controversial topic we knew the press would gravitate towards upon the book’s release, as it dealt with topics other pregnancy books don’t often focus on in a real and raw tone that came from actual parents - from experiences with postpartum depression to pancake boobs after breastfeeding, to a chapter dedicated solely to poop.

The driving insight for the PR campaign was that new and expectant parents are inundated with information - some helpful, and some not so much. Despite the millions of pregnancy books out there, most expecting parents feel utterly alone and unprepared for their experience. Not to mention, social media glamorizes pregnancy, inundating expecting parents with unrealistic expectations of what the experience is.

We reached our target audience of donors and new and expectant parents in the Greater Toronto Area with a strategic PR approach led by earned media outreach. Hard copies of the books were mailed out to lifestyle and parenting influencers who we knew the topic would resonate with. We pitched earned media with the book itself, high-resolution imagery and access to the bank of videos from experts who were interviewed for the book.

At every touchpoint we reinforced our key message - that NYGH is here to help

When it was time to launch the book, we leveraged an earned-media-first approach to bolster the conversation and spread the word. We also distributed the book to key influencers who we knew the content of the book would resonate with.

We also leveraged took a timely moment - Maternal Health Awareness Week - to continue spreading the news about this helpful resource. A secondary, tailored pitch was distributed to local and national media outlets.

Just like any author, the hospital leaders along with our creative team (who are also new parents) launched the book with a media tour hosted on Canada’s biggest broadcaster - CBC - among other reputable national, provincial, and local media outlets. During these media interviews birthing experts from NYG explained some of the anecdotes from the book. They brought to the surface conversations about birth that many people don’t know or don’t talk about.

After its release, our book debuted at No. 1 on Amazon’s Pregnancy & Childbirth bestseller list and was the No. 1 Most Gifted book in the category. After 120 days and counting, it continues to be the #1 best seller in fertility, the #1 most gifted, and the #2 most wished for. And on the NYG microsite it has been downloaded over 4000 times.

The campaign also sparked interest among top-tier news and lifestyle outlets, even generating a 5-minute segment on Canada's largest broadcaster, CBC, as well as feature segments on CTV, The Morning Show, and Breakfast Television.

In the first month alone, we received over 2000 submissions. And most importantly, our book exceeded key objectives, delivering more than 15,300 net new leads for our donor pool- fifteen times more than the original goal- and increasing the donor email database by 300%. The book also drove more than 87MM impressions.