Maple Leaf Foods is rolling out “Shop The Leaf,” the second phase of its made-in-Canada campaign.

Developed in partnership with No Fixed Address, the first phase of the campaign, “Look For The Leaf,” was triggered by tariff tensions and featured external brands – typically considered competitors – being pushed via Maple Leaf’s media channels to help consumers looking for Canadian products.

D’Arcy Finley, VP of brands at Maple Leaf Foods, tells Media in Canada that this second phase enables consumers to not only identify Canadian brands but also buy them, thanks to partnerships with coupon and flyer app Flipp and food delivery service Skip.

“The wave of patriotism back in March was monumental,” Finley says. “But with time can come complacency. We wanted to keep stoking the fire and move behaviour from awareness to action.”

Luke Moore, VP and managing director of media at Fuse, which handles the media buy, tells MiC that they have “deliberately spread the love to some Canadian publishers that didn’t make it onto the first wave.”

“Overall spend is comparable, but the media mix has been tweaked to deliver against the stated strategy,” he says.

The partnership with Skip and Flipp will go live on June 30 – to coincide with Canada Day – featuring a fully integrated experience with a top tile on Skip’s landing page, customized banners and editorial highlights showcasing Canadian brands. Maple Leaf Foods has a paid partnership Skip post that will also drive shoppers to the Skip experience.

The campaign will run on social media, digital media and OOH street advertising near retail outlets, with ads appearing across Canada until the end of July, guiding consumers to Canadian products and brands. In Montreal, the campaign was launched to coincide with the Saint Jean Baptiste Day holiday.

According to Moore, the media plan marks a shift in the overall strategy for the brand, which for this campaign has been deviating from its typical focus on TV, online video, social media and consumer media. The first phase took a mass-market approach, targeting a broad audience of English- and French-speaking adult supermarket shoppers through homepage takeovers and dominations across select Canadian news media, key social channels and high-traffic site-specific DOOH executions.

“Success with this wave is a direct evolution of the earlier phase, and the interest in the initiative has been outstanding,” Moore says. “We are looking for active engagement amongst all the participating brands, gauging interest of any new Canadian brands, measuring consumer interest in the partnership and, ultimately, looking for a positive bump on our overall sales.”

The first phase featured 15 brands (such as Kawartha Dairy, Neal Brothers and High Liner Foods) and 30 others signing up for a new microsite showing Canadian products. Moore says it racked up 26.3 million digital impressions, 5.2 million OOH impressions and more than 146,000 website clicks.