All Christmas Music: CHFI National Holiday Takeover
To launch the highly anticipated, month-long All Christmas Music format for 98.1 CHFI, the creative strategy focused on evoking deep holiday nostalgia. The campaign anchored on an expansive, high-impact out-of-home (OOH) takeover and a nationwide digital rollout, transforming a seasonal format change into a massive, multi-market cultural event.
Executed by an incredibly agile, hyper-lean team—consisting of just one project manager and three designers, including myself; this massive campaign required end-to-end creative autonomy. I personally discovered Toronto-based illustrator Rosey Cheekes, onboarded her to the project, negotiated her talent fees, and briefed her on the conceptual direction to establish the custom nostalgic character illustrations that formed the visual heart of the takeover.
The centerpiece of the campaign was an enormous, full-station environmental takeover of Toronto’s bustling Dundas TTC Subway Station. Partnering with Pattison Outdoor, we structurally mapped and transformed every possible surface within the transit hub. I personally directed the spatial strategy and layout for every environmental decal, including the precise, bespoke positioning of all 74 holiday elves across the platform level to delight commuting crowds.
Navigating a spatial installation of this magnitude required immense technical adaptability. When ongoing PRESTO turnstile construction unexpectedly threatened the original station footprint mid-production, our lean team rapidly engineered unique design workarounds to navigate the changing site constraints, successfully preserving the continuity and impact of the immersive brand environment.
The campaign's footprint extended far beyond transit to capture broad national engagement. The momentum of the Toronto creative was so powerful that the national radio team rapidly expanded the media buy on the fly, purchasing immediate media in Western Canada for Calgary’s sister station, 95.9 CHFM. Our lean team pivoted instantly to scale the creative footprint across three high-traffic Alberta retail malls, localized out-of-home (OOH) networks, and a comprehensive digital rollout. The entire visual system was engineered to be evergreen; the core OOH and digital assets have been successfully repurposed and run every single year since its launch. Furthermore, the original campaign strategy included a conceptual pitch for a custom Toronto Santa Claus Parade float; a grand-scale experiential idea that was later fully realized and developed by the network to cement the brand's long-term visual legacy.
