As part of its partnership with the Montreal Canadiens, RONA took its “Knock on Wood” campaign one step further this year, inviting Habs fans to touch a piece of the championship-winning wood from the team’s 1993 Stanley Cup run.
RONA and Sid Lee took on a major challenge: creating a new ad campaign in less than 24 hours for each round of the playoffs. Each video featured the wooden stick of a 1993 Canadiens hero and invited fans to come touch these pieces of hockey history and bring the team some luck.
For the first round, RONA, with the support of MVP Sports Marketing, secured the stick of Patrice Brisebois, an iconic Canadiens defenceman from the 1993 championship team. In the second round, the stakes were raised with Guy Carbonneau’s stick—the one he used to score twice against the Buffalo Sabres, helping propel the Canadiens into the Stanley Cup Final. For the third round, RONA brought out its most powerful good-luck charm: Vincent Damphousse’s stick. He was the Canadiens’ leading scorer during the 1993 playoffs.
In each round, the stick made its way to Montreal sports bars, where fans gathered to watch the games together. During the second round, the first two pieces of memorabilia were also displayed at Fan Jam at the Bell Centre—the major fan gathering held before every home game—and at the Montreal Casino on game nights, giving fans the chance to touch them in person.
Throughout the playoffs, RONA also gave away 6,000 wooden keychains at 52 participating stores across Quebec, giving fans a small piece of the tradition to take home.
