Nothing touches the heart like a critically ill child. It’s true that Cossette had a head start when it came to creating an emotive campaign to support Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation’s first major solo fundraiser in 28 years.

But Long Live Little Brats far exceeds the usual emotive campaign film it could have been. The film features a girl whose flair for unapologetic mischief is underlined by a cover version of the punk anthem, I Fought the Law by The Clash and the power of the campaign to control its audience’s emotions across its 2.5 minutes is held in the film’s changes of tone and pace as she fights cancer – as well as a surprise ending.

The campaign film needed to stand out, Cossette noted. Quebec is a very competitive market for children’s charities. The difficult task was to break through the volume and attract donors and the campaign had the most ambitious goal in the history of paediatric campaigns – to raise $200 million by 2026.

Cossette also notes that:

The film was shot under strict COVID-19 guidelines which prohibit physical contact between actors unless they are part of the same COVID bubble. This led us to cast a real family: the woman who portrays the mom is a professional actor. For her partner and daughter, however, this was a first acting experience.

The first scenes we shot were ones where our little girl is battling leukemia and has lost all of her hair, which means that our young actor had to wear a bald cap. Her reaction to seeing herself in the mirror looking this way was raw and honest – and as you can imagine, it was very emotional for both of her parents as well. 

Although it may not be what you first think of when you think of kids, punk music was an easy choice because it conveys so much of the emotions depicted in our spot: joy, irreverence, anger, sadness. Punk music also happens to be a shared passion of the creative team that worked on the project. 

The Children’s treats a lot of young patients suffering from severe illnesses. Working with our director Benjamin Nicolas, we felt it was important to keep the film as honest as possible, by showing that this is a battle for the long haul. We shot over 80 scenes with different seasonal decor so we could have a wider pool of shots to choose from. 

The Long Live Little Brats campaign also features 30-sec and 10-sec cut-downs for TV and radio, plus preroll, banner, print and OOH ads, which build on the brand that Cossette created for the Foundation in 2018.