Raising awareness for a new way to combat germs

How Talk Shop helped raise awareness for Teck’s Copper & Health Program, promoting the efficacy of antimicrobial copper in combating the spread of germs.

Public Relations
This is some text inside of a div block.
Media Relations
This is some text inside of a div block.
Digital + Social Media
This is some text inside of a div block.
Experiential Marketing
This is some text inside of a div block.
350+
earned media hits
70M+
earned impressions
165K
landing page visits

Challenge

In the face of the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Teck Resources embarked on a groundbreaking campaign to enhance health outcomes for individuals and communities.The cornerstone of this initiative was the advocacy for the use of antimicrobial copper, a cutting-edge solution to combat healthcare-acquired infections and the proliferation of harmful bacteria in public spaces.

However, Teck Resources faced a formidable hurdle—despite the effectiveness of antimicrobial copper, our nationwide polling on health attitudes revealed that a staggering 60-82% of Canadians remained unaware of copper's exceptional antimicrobial properties. This knowledge gap presented a significant obstacle as the widespread adoption of antimicrobial copper in public spaces depended on decision-makers awareness and comprehension of its profound benefits.

Teck needed to build public and government support for its Copper & Health Program,but translating a materials science story into public credibility is difficult: the claim needed to be proven, not just asserted, and it needed to hold up across a fragmented set of pilot partners, each with its own audience, risk tolerance, and communications needs.

The program spanned an unusually broad coalition, including the TTC, the Royal Ontario Museum, Vancouver Coastal Health, Lions Gate Hospital, TransLink, YVR, and others, each piloting antimicrobial copper installations on high-touch surfaces such as bus railings, door handles, and hospital equipment. A UBC research team ran ongoing surface testing to validate results in real-world conditions, meaning the story couldn't be told all at once. It had to unfold pilot by pilot, with credibility building over time as data came in.

Teck brought in Talk Shop to solve two problems at once: keep each individual pilot visible and locally relevant to its own stakeholders, and stitch the results into a cumulative, evidence-backed narrative strong enough to move public opinion and government support at a national level.

Our Approach

Talk Shop built a strategy designed to solve the program's core tension: proving a scientific claim credibly while making it feel locally relevant everywhere it showed up. Rather than a single national campaign, we developed a scalable model, one that could be tailored and re-launched with each new partner and pilot, while still rolling up into a consistent, cumulative story about Teck's commitment to community and to the research backing that commitment.

Working directly with each community partner, we built custom launch plans suited to that partner's audience, risk profile, and public role. Each pilot launch brought together provincial and national government participation, targeted media relations supported by embargoed releases, digital and social marketing, out-of-home placements, on-site signage explaining the antimicrobial copper technology, public-facing events, newsletter content, and video. The result was a repeatable playbook that still felt custom-built for every partner.

Just as important, no pilot lived in isolation. Each one was leveraged simultaneously at three levels: locally, to build relevance and goodwill with the immediate community; provincially, to connect the dots across pilots within a region; and nationally, to position the Copper & Health Program as a cohesive, evidence-driven initiative worthy of sustained government support.

  • Over a 2 year period, Talk Shop secured more than 350 media hits, resulting in 70M impressions, including coverage in target outlets such as CBC News, Toronto Star and Global News.
  • Designed 50+ creative assets, including signage, posters, postcards, ads, digital assets, videos and photography.
  • Oversaw an advertising campaign results in 41M public impressions.
  • Garnered 19k votes cast on social media.
  • Garnered 9M video views with a cost per-view under $0.05 across all channels
  • Generated 165k landing page visits.
  • Partnerships and program secured into future years as a result of campaign success.

Let’s Talk Shop.

Let’s Talk Shop.

Send us a message

Thank you for your submission!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.