The Challenge
The Plane Pull to End ALS had outgrown its origins. What started as a mostly internal Bombardier staff event held at their hangar had real potential as a public fundraiser, but realizing that potential meant rebuilding it from the ground up.
The first task was a full brand and experience revitalization: new identity, new look and feel, new energy, anchored by a high-profile new partnership with Billy Bishop Airport that would open the event to the public and the Toronto waterfront.
Then the partnership ended and could not be renewed for operational reasons.
With it went the venue, the aircraft, and the core concept the event was named after. The question wasn’t just “where do we hold it now?”, it was “what is this event without a plane?”
My Role
As the marketing manager at ALS Canada, I owned the brand strategy and creative direction for both phases of this project: the original Plane Pull revitalization and the subsequent evolution to Pull to End ALS.
That meant writing creative briefs, leading the work with our brand agency, driving internal alignment on concepts, and ultimately making the strategic call that reshaped the event’s future.
The
Approach
Phase 1: Revitalizing Plane Pull
The original event had good bones but needed everything else rebuilt. Working with a brand agency, we developed a refreshed identity and experience designed for a public audience, moving from a corporate staff event to something that could generate genuine community participation and fundraising momentum.
Phase 2: The Strategic Pivot
When the Billy Bishop partnership couldn’t be renewed, the instinct might have been to find another airport, another plane, another venue that could replicate the original concept. Instead, I pushed for a more fundamental rethink.
The name “Plane Pull” locked the event to a single type of asset and a single type of partnership. One change in circumstance, and it had already happened once, could threaten the event’s existence entirely. The solution was to broaden the concept: what if we pulled something different every year, and built a brand flexible enough to accommodate that?
That led to two decisions:
Renaming the event “Pull to End ALS”; removing the dependency on any specific object or venue while keeping the core mechanic and energy intact.
Wrapping an 18-wheeler in ALS Canada branding for a 5-year commitment; giving the event a high-visibility, ownable asset that travelled, promoted the cause year-round, and didn’t require a venue partnership to exist. The truck became both the first “pull object” under the new brand and a mobile billboard for ALS Canada.
The new logo and identity were developed with the brand agency to reflect this flexibility, built around the pull as a concept, not a specific object.
Before & After
The original Plane Pull identity was built around a specific asset, an aircraft and a specific partnership. Visually and conceptually, the brand couldn’t exist without both. Pull to End ALS flipped that logic. The new identity is anchored in the act; the pull, the effort, the community showing up rather than any object or venue. The visual system needed to work whether participants were pulling a plane, a fire truck, or an 18-wheeler.
Event Photos
From airport tarmac to open road, the Pull to End ALS rebrand kept the energy of the original event while freeing it from any single venue or partnership.
The Outcome
Pull to End ALS launched successfully in its first year under the new brand and has continued to grow. The event is still running—proof that the concept holds without any single venue or partnership propping it up.
The truck wrap, a 5-year commitment at launch, turned a potential vulnerability into a marketing asset: a high-visibility vehicle that promotes ALS Canada in market continuously, not just during event season.
More broadly, the rebrand demonstrated something worth noting for any nonprofit running signature events: the brand should be bigger than any one partnership. Building that resilience in proactively, rather than scrambling after the fact, is what is keeping this event going.