Vancouver/Toronto agency Palmer Jarvis DDB has spun its Cannes Silver Lion-winning Canadian Hockey Association spots from last year – the acclaimed ‘Relax, It’s Only a Game’ campaign – into a literal hat trick of hockey clients. In addition to the CHA, PJ has taken on the business of USA Hockey (the minor league equivalent of the CHA in the U.S.) and NHL.com, shooting spots for all three over the Thanksgiving weekend in Toronto.

The previous pool of CHA spots, directed by untitled’s Tim Godsall, received a lot of media attention, and PJ account director Scott Keith estimates about 450 different media outlets carried stories about the campaign.

The creative for the spots was a role reversal of sorts, where kids are pressuring their parents to stand up for themselves in everyday life situations, meant to reflect real-life instances where parents pressure their children to stand up to goons or referees in the hockey arena.

When word of the CHA spots’ successes crossed the border last year, the folks at USA Hockey got involved and started airing the ads. According to producer Sue Bell, USA Hockey is fully on board for the next pool and the spots will start airing in both the U.S. and Canada in November.

Although the creative on the new CHA campaign is heavily guarded, Bell says the three new spots are taken to another absurd level, with the parents putting unnecessary pressure on their kids in situations outside of the game.

‘Even the director [Godsall] said to me it’s interesting that we didn’t do more of the same,’ says Bell. ‘Last year was role reversal, and it would have been easy to do that [again]. Instead, the guys took a different path, looking at how ridiculous it is when parents pressure their children.’

Vancouver’s Keith (who was raised in Windsor, ON and still considers the Leafs his team) grew up on the junior hockey circuit and is well aware of the pressures placed on kids who play. Wanting to create awareness of this, he spearheaded production of the CHA campaign. He never guessed the universality of the spots’ theme would spark such interest from other sports.

‘Youth Soccer in the States, which has about three million kids, approached us,’ says Keith. ‘Junior football, basketball, baseball, all the sports really want to get involved. I’d love to do this for everybody, which is the reason the creative… was purposely not even set in an arena. It is such a universal issue.’

The new spots were again directed by Godsall, with Andre Pienaar working the camera. The PJ team of writer Joseph Bonnici and art director Darryl Gardner handled the creative. Vancouver’s JMB Post Production is handling the cut-and-paste duties, while Wave Productions does the audio work.

Bell says it was a different kind of shoot, with the spots shot on 16mm using two cameras.

‘We wanted to capture the kids’ reaction when they were genuine instead of doing cutaways toward the end of the day,’ she says. ‘We had two cameras going the whole time, which I think will be really critical to the success of this.’

The success of last year’s CHA campaign even reached the NHL. So impressed with the work were the pros that they brought PJ in to create a pair of NHL.com spots, also shot over the Thanksgiving weekend.

According to Bell, the same crew was used for the NHL.com ads, with the exception of Bonnici partnering with Kevin Rathgeber for the creative Vancouver’s Wayne Kozak Audio Productions handling the audio.