If you love looking out the window during takeoff, you've probably noticed de-icing trucks. You may even be familiar with Aéro Mag without knowing it. It's a company that specializes in de-icing operations for aircrafts, with which we collaborated to launch the world's first electric de-icing truck. Republik's task was to develop a B2B awareness campaign for this news; one that would bring Aéro Mag closer to its strategic vision of becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2035.

We needed to mark an innovation of this scale with a campaign of the same magnitude to help a true jewel of Quebec industry position itself as an environmental pioneer in the international aeronautics world - which was itself hitting the brakes during the pandemic. All this, while generating interest and a conversation around de-icing trucks among Aéro Mag's clients, business partners, and political stakeholders.

To draw the attention of an entire industry, we looked for a uniting code that would have the potential to spark the collective imagination despite the spoken languages or geographic location of our audiences. And we found it. In the aviation world, there's a ceremony that occurs when an aircraft completes its first or last flight. This ritual, better known as a "water salute", comes to life when trucks on either side of an aircraft on the tarmac use their water canons to form an honorary arch.