Be Like St. Mike's: The Answer Was Hiding in the Hospital's Name

This clever call to action channels a legendary Gatorade commercial

In Canada, the hospital advertising category has taken on the competitive nature of sports marketing. Such ads are beginning to feel ubiquitous, so we needed a new approach that would ring true for St. Michael’s in Toronto.

That posed a significant challenge. All hospitals have extraordinary stories to tell—stories of care, resilience, innovation and lives changed. St. Mike’s has no shortage of them. But we required an idea to define those stories for St. Mike’s alone, an approach that would clearly set the facility apart.

The answer was hiding in the hospital’s name.

People in Toronto already call the place “St. Mike’s.” We didn’t have to invent that familiarity or manufacture a new identity. We just had to ask what “Mike” could mean.

The more time we spent inside the hospital, the clearer the answer became. We kept encountering the same qualities: compassion, innovation, commitment and relentlessness. From a trauma surgeon operating through the night to a researcher pushing the boundaries of medicine, there was a shared mindset behind the work.

That observation formed the basis of “Be Like Mike.”

The idea turned a familiar nickname into a call to action and gave us a way to tell stories that went beyond what happens at St. Mike’s to how and why it happens. Rather than center the campaign primarily on illness or crisis, we could focus on the people and mindset behind the hospital’s care, research and medical breakthroughs.

There’s an obvious cultural echo in “Be Like Mike” from the Jordan x Gatorade days. And we were aware of it from the beginning. There are subtle nods for people who catch them. But the campaign couldn’t depend on that reference. Here, “Mike” isn’t one person. It’s the collective character of the hospital.

We didn’t need to create that character. It was already there. Our job was to bring it to life.

That meant the execution needed to feel like the place, too. We wanted the work to be bright, optimistic and full of life, so rather than create a fictional hospital world, we went inside St. Mike’s.

The 90-second film, directed by Oscar-nominated Hubert Davis, follows a young man waking in the hospital after an injury. As he moves through his care, we encounter nurses, doctors, surgeons and researchers who each reveal a different expression of that shared mindset. And yes, they are all named Mike.

Many of the people on screen work there, and the film draws from real experiences. There’s neurosurgeon Dr. Vitor Mendes Pereira, whose work recently culminated in a world-first remote robotic-assisted neurovascular procedure. There’s trauma surgeon Dr. Najma Ahmed, who operated through the night following Toronto’s Danforth shooting. And there’s patient Gavin Higgs, who arrived with a broken neck and asked his surgeon before a high-risk operation, “Do you have this?” The answer: “I’ve got this.”

Filming inside a working hospital brought its own reality. Doctors have patients. Surgeons have surgeries. The hospital has to keep being a hospital. We worked around schedules and adapted when necessary. But shooting in the real environment with real people gave Hubert something we couldn’t have recreated on a set: the texture and humanity of St. Mike’s itself.

Then came a piece of creative serendipity. Our search for the right piece of music took several months. We wanted something so unique, it could only belong to St. Mike’s.

Then we came across “Trendsetter” by Connor Price featuring and co-written by Haviah Mighty. We learned that Haviah had undergone life-saving heart surgery at St. Mike’s at 33. Beyond the authenticity of the story-the energy of the song and its lyrics were perfect for what St. Mike’s is achieving. Every day, for every patient.

Suddenly the soundtrack was another St. Mike’s story. And Haviah is helping launch the “Be Like Mike” campaign alongside Dr. Gianluigi Bisleri, the cardiac surgeon who saved her life.

It reinforced what we’d learned throughout the process: we didn’t have to look outside St. Mike’s to find a way to differentiate it.

The name was already there. The people were already there. The stories were already there. The creative opportunity was finding the idea that could connect them.

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