Toronto Hydro is launching an ad campaign to raise awareness of wasteful practices and promote its Beat the Peak power bar giveaway during the last two weekends of October.

With print ads starting today in the Toronto Star, Metro, Now Magazine and Eye Weekly, as well as nine Toronto community newspapers and five ethnic papers, and radio ads across the city’s stations, the campaign’s goal is to hand out 50,000 pre-programmed power bars.

The electricity provider also posted a YouTube video to help spread the word.

Toronto-based Gaggi handled the media buy and Thornley Fallis’s Toronto office took care of the video production. Green Living Enterprises, also in Toronto, did the print and radio creative.

The power bars, which will be handed out at Sears, Walmart, Canadian Tire and Staples stores in the Toronto area, are pre-programmed to coincide with on-peak and off-peak rates and are ideal for charging electronics and reducing ‘phantom,’ or stand-by, power usage.

According to Toronto Hydro, if all the free power bars are used, it will be equivalent to removing 300 homes from the grid.

Program details are available on the Toronto Hydro website.