be like mike

St. Mike’s turns its name into a call to action with ‘Be Like Mike’

Bensimon Byrne’s first work for Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation puts its people and mindset at the centre, with a film directed by Hubert Davis and music from former patient Haviah Mighty.

Who is mike? Not a person, but a mindset: compassionate, innovative, committed, relentless.

JUNO Award-winning musician Haviah Mighty was 33 when she had life-saving heart surgery at St. Michael’s Hospital. Recovering in the ICU, she could hear her surgeon checking in on patient after patient. “I was in disbelief that he was just saving lives back to back to back,” she says.
But it wasn’t just what the St. Mike’s team did that moved her. It was how they did it. Dr. Gianluigi Bisleri took an interest in her life—her music, her career, the world she had built and wanted to keep building. He was committed to helping her return to all of it.
That experience—and the mindset behind it—is at the heart of be like mike, a new brand campaign for St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation created by Toronto agency Bensimon Byrne. Mighty’s “Trendsetter,” with Connor Price, provides the soundtrack to the campaign’s hero film.

Known locally as St. Mike’s, St. Michael’s Hospital is a fully affiliated teaching and research hospital serving Toronto’s urban communities and beyond. It is a Level 1 trauma centre and provincial hub for neurosurgery, complex cardiac and cardiovascular care and more, and is home to one of the largest MS clinics in North America.

Be like mike turns the hospital’s familiar nickname into a call to action, capturing the compassionate, innovative and relentless mindset behind the hospital’s care, research and medical breakthroughs. Rather than centre the campaign on illness or crisis, the strategy celebrates the people who make that work possible.

The campaign arrives at a time when public trust in institutions is fragile, yet trust in frontline healthcare workers has never been stronger. New research commissioned by St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation found that 91% of Canadians rank frontline healthcare workers as the single most trusted voice acting in the public’s best interest, above government and business.

At St. Mike’s, that trust is earned every day by people who believe exceptional care should never come with exceptions.

“We hear it again and again. There’s ‘something different’ about St. Mike’s,” says Kevin Goldthorp, President and CEO of St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation. “It’s a belief among our staff and supporters that there is always more we can do, more we can discover, and more we can give to every patient. Be like mike gives us a shared language for that ethos, and a way to invite others into it. A way to express not only what we do, but who we are.”

“Healthcare advertising often starts in a place of crisis. We wanted to do something that felt different — bright, optimistic and full of life,” says Joseph Bonnici, Chief Creative Officer, Bensimon Byrne. “The more time we spent with St. Mike’s, the more we realized the story was really about its people and the mindset they share. That became be like mike.”

A film from the frontlines of care

At the centre of the campaign is a 90-second film directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Davis, which brings the platform to life through the perspective of a patient moving through St. Mike’s. A young man wakes in the hospital after an injury and discovers that everyone caring for him—the nurses, the doctors, the surgeons—share the same mindset. The film captures the urgency of trauma care, the ambition of surgical innovation, the impact of philanthropy, and the humanity that runs through every floor of the hospital.

The campaign extends across film, out-of-home, digital and social, with be like mike appearing throughout Toronto and across the hospital itself. Bensimon Byrne partnered with TADIEM sister companies OneMethod on design and Narrative XPR on public relations for the integrated campaign.

How Canadians can support be like mike

Be like mike invites the public to stand behind the people of St. Michael’s Hospital, most directly by supporting the Foundation, whose donors fund the research, equipment, and care that make moments like Haviah’s and Gavin’s possible. Every gift made at belikemike.ca advances this life-changing work.

There are other ways to take part, too:


• mike Drop: Purchase a limited-edition mike hat, available at belikemike.ca.
• Open mike: A public storytelling platform inviting Canadians to share their own St. Michael’s Hospital experiences on social using #belikemike

Join us. Visit belikemike.ca.