Egale Canada is combining digital and interactive with traditional media in its latest campaign to spotlight the ongoing discrimination against 2SLGBTQ+ people. 

“Hate isn’t history,” supported by creative agency partner VML Canada, visually juxtaposes modern-day incidents of hate or violence with those from past decades. Media was planned and purchased internally by the advocacy organization.

The campaign has a renewed urgency amid a backlash against DEI initiatives that saw some major sponsors pull out of Toronto Pride this year.

“Hate is being emboldened right now, from everything happening south of the border [and] around the world,” Allen Kwong, ECD at VML, tells Media in Canada. “People who want to be bigoted and want to openly discriminate and hate are feeling more and more power to do it.”

To drive home the message, each ad shows a historic act of hate based on real headlines, overlaid by a cellphone capturing the incident as though it were occurring today. 

Interactive posters allow users to hover their phones to complete the visuals and scan a QR code to trigger 20-second videos that then direct users to Egale’s website, where they can access resources. The posters are appearing at some 2SLGBTQ+ establishments in downtown Toronto during the culmination of Pride Month, on now, and are planned for similar locations in Calgary and Vancouver later this summer to coincide with their Pride events.  

A street-level digital activation allows people to hear stories of hate exactly where they happened through a geo-targeted audio tour that also lives online as a pinned Google map. The activation is happening in Toronto first, with the goal of creating it in more locations across Canada. 

The interactive posters and digital activation mark an evolution from previous campaigns. 

There are also 30-second TV spots airing nationally all summer long, with 15-second OLVs running through the fall. For the latter, Egale is using promoted social and has secured some donated digital avails from Rogers Media. Three different print ads are currently running in newspapers across the country.

“Hate isn’t history” is Egale Canada’s biggest campaign initiative this year. As part of the launch, Egale is hosting a panel in Toronto on June 20 featuring a discussion with 2SLGBTQ+ people of different generations discussing their experiences with hate. 

With files from Christopher Lombardo