The right way to promote fitness
A new campaign designed to encourage women in the UK to exercise is gathering international attention. Developed by Sport England, the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign breaks away from the norm of perfectly posed promotional shots to show exercise for what it really is, a hot, sweaty and most importantly fun affair.
Set to Missy Elliot’s song ‘Get ur Freak on’ the video shows women of all shapes and sizes going hard at it, getting their sweat on and loving it. Posted on YouTube on 12 January 2015, the upbeat video has already attracted 2,323, 353 views. What makes this video and print campaign so fantastic is that the women featured are real women that Sport England found exercising in local parks and sporting grounds. In the campaign bio the video is described as “celebrating the women who are doing their thing no matter how they do it, how they look or even how sweaty they get. They’re here to inspire us to wiggle, jiggle, move and prove that judgement is a barrier that can be overcome #thisgirlcan.” Viewers can even log onto the campaign website to Meet the Girls and watch their behind the scenes interviews. In one such video we meet Kelly who is a 31-year-old single mother of three. To stay fit she works out with her kids in her living room. She says, “The kids enjoy exercising with me. When I put on my work out video or put the music on, they just instinctively join in.”
The catalyst for the campaign was a research project that found that in the UK two million fewer women than men are active, but 75% want to do more. When asked what was holding them back, respondents said it was primarily a fear of judgement. In an interview for UK paper The Independent, Sport England’s CEO, Jennie Price explains that before starting the campaign they spent considerable time finding out exactly why women felt sport and exercise was not for them. "Some of the issues, like time and cost, were familiar, but one of the strongest themes was a fear of judgement. Worries about being judged for being the wrong size, not fit enough and not skilled enough came up time and again. Every single woman I have talked to about this campaign has identified with this, and it is that fear of not being 'good enough' in some way, and the fear that you are the only one who feels like that, that we want to address."
The campaign uses humour and real human behavior to take the pressure out of fitness and exercise. In between footage of girls pounding the pavement, swimming laps or shaking it in a dance class, slogans such as ‘I jiggle therefore I am’, ‘Sweating like a pig’ and ‘Damn right I’m hot’ appear on screen. These images are relatable and enforce the idea that when you exercise as if nobody is watching you not only achieve physical benefits, but also have a lot of fun.
This approach to fitness messaging is one that fitness provider in every country can learn from. If we want to inspire Australians to exercise more, we need to position exercise as being fun and achievable for everyone. Whether your promoting services at your facility or speaking directly to a client, remember that you’re dealing with real people each with their own unique goals and challenges.
View the campaign video here.
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