• • • The Challenge
      Petro-Canada needed a brand mascot for its CareMaker Days “Give A Honk” campaign — one that could humanize their message and create an immediate emotional connection with Canadians supporting unpaid family caregivers.

      The Impact
      The campaign exceeded its fundraising goal in the first 72 hours. And 50% of viewers had improved brand perception of Petro-Canada.

      Why Sarofsky
      We brought blockbuster character craft to a social mission. Our unique development pipeline delivered a fully realized mascot on a tight timeline, while AiLive, our proprietary production engine, made the Goose deployable anywhere, instantly.

The Brief
In the client’s words:
“Our Goose is lovable, but not like a teddy bear. His sharp wit is his strong suit. It makes him believable, someone you trust and listen to. Canadians can rally around him because he stands for something essential to our Canadian identity — caring.”

Our Approach
Petro-Canada CareMakers partnered with Sarofsky to develop a brand mascot that gave voice to caregivers’ experiences and fostered authentic engagement with audiences navigating this deeply personal journey.

The goose advocates fiercely for the 8+ million Canadians providing unpaid care. But who advocates for him? Who gives this flappy, feisty icon the star treatment he deserves?

That’s where we came in.

Creative Development
We approached the goose like casting a lead actor. The brief gave us the character profile: no-nonsense, bold, a little sassy, totally unafraid to ruffle feathers. A character who doesn’t just support caregivers — he demands they get the respect they deserve.

Our job? Audition the traits, then develop the performance. Using the same blockbuster character craft we bring to entertainment, we refined every gesture, expression, and mannerism until this goose could command a scene. Every feather, flap, and fierce glare was directed to steal attention and drive home the mission.

Visual Language
Every pose reads unmistakably as “goose” — but with exaggerated, animated flair that makes him unforgettable.

He gets too close to the camera. He taps his beak for emphasis. He rarely stays calm. His “goositude” lives in his eyes, where sass, charm, and attitude hit you instantly.

Showing the whites makes him human. Exaggerating his neck and rounding his belly makes him expressive. The result? A character built to steal scenes and build trust — the first 30 seconds of connection that defines every successful brand world we create.

Building a Bilingual Star

Great characters transcend language, but they need to feel native in every market. For the goose, that meant creating a fully realized French-Canadian version: adapting jokes to land authentically in Québécois, casting a voice that matched his sass in both languages, and ensuring his personality translated without losing edge. This wasn’t dubbing, it was recasting the performance for a new audience.

Scaling the Character with AiLive

In blockbuster entertainment, iconic characters live beyond a single film. They show up everywhere — sequels, spin-offs, theme parks, social media. We built AiLive with that same philosophy: audiences connect with a character in the first 30 seconds, then the relationship extends across every touchpoint.

The goose was designed from the ground up for this kind of scale. We develop characters with the full ecosystem in mind, not just the hero moment, but the hundreds of supporting scenes that keep them alive in culture.

Then we train AiLive the way we’d train a performer: teaching the system the goose’s mannerisms, timing, attitude, and range so the character stays consistent no matter where he appears.

The result?
A self-service production engine that lets the Petro-Canada team deploy the goose anywhere, anytime — maintaining blockbuster-level craft at the speed and flexibility modern campaigns demand.

Directing the Performance

The best characters emerge from true creative partnership.

The goose’s voice came as much from the client as it did from Sarofsky—a complete mind-meld where both teams shaped his personality, sharpened his wit, and refined his edge.

What made this project exceptional was our ability to treat character development like rehearsal. Because we built the goose efficiently from the ground up, we had time to run multiple takes – tweaking inflection, adjusting tone, refining delivery—until we captured the perfect performance.

Just like directing an actor, we iterated until every honk, head-tilt, and side-eye landed exactly right.

The Sarofsky Playground

Our studio operates like a blockbuster writers’ room: a safe space to play, create, and try things. “I don’t know, let’s try it!” isn’t just encouraged, it’s how we work. That ever-present permission to experiment is what keeps clients coming back and characters like the goose feeling fresh, spontaneous, and alive.

Agility Meets Opportunity

Our production approach isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about staying nimble enough to seize unforeseen opportunities. When the chance emerged to collaborate with PK Subban, we didn’t miss a beat. Our agile pipeline and character-ready infrastructure allowed us to pivot instantly, integrating new creative without sacrificing quality or timeline.

That’s blockbuster thinking in action: building systems flexible enough to scale up, adapt fast, and deliver star-level craft, even when the script changes mid-production.

Caregivers were recognized and lifted up.

The campaign was a roaring success, reaching its fundraising goal within 72 hours.

And the brand enjoyed significant brand lift.

And after seeing the campaign, 50% of viewers had improved brand perception of Petro-Canada.