Imagine the War at Your Doorstep

A campaign inspired by Zelenskky’s words to the Canadian Parliament in March. In his address, Zelensky urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to envision his own nation facing this kind of interminable conflict.

“Imagine that at 4am in the morning, each of you hears explosions, terrible explosions,” Zelenskyy said. “Justin, imagine that you hear it, and your children hear it, hear missile strikes at Ottawa airport. Imagine you are looking for words to explain this to children. Explain to them that a large-scale war has begun. … Can you imagine the famous CN Tower in Toronto, if it was hit by Russian bombs? Of course, I don’t wish this on anyone, but this is our reality in which we live.”

In essence, he asked Trudeau “to feel this—what we feel every day.”

The remark prompted a new fundraising campaign for the Ukrainian nonprofit, Razom. Created by WPP-owned agencies Tank Worldwide and our very own Grey Cananda.

The “Feel What We Feel” campaign, running both offline and online, consists of an interactive website that allows users to swipe across images of three cities: Toronto, Montreal, and New York. Simulating each city, derelict by the harsh effects of the war. 

The academy award winning Rodeo X, acclaimed for their work on Hollywood films Rango and The Golden Compass, engineered the visual effects for the campaign, and Kffein developed the microsite. Media partners Astral, BellMedia, Rogers, Yahoo, CBC and Publicité Sauvage donated prime ad space, and WPP’s Group M handled media “When this war began and we saw the scale of the human disaster unfolding, we all rallied to the cause,” said Marc Lanouette, Global CEO at Tank Worldwide. “Every dollar we raise goes to Razom.”

 Donations will go towards medicine items, hospital supplies, and tech-enabled emergency response devices to Eastern Ukraine.

“We are grateful to Tank Worldwide and Grey Canada for standing with Ukraine and taking the initiative in creating the Feel What We Feel campaign, and we hope that it will help us further deliver on our mission of saving as many Ukrainian lives as possible.”