The end of October saw Sport England launch the third phase of its ongoing and award-winning campaign series ‘This Girl Can’.
The creative again juxtaposes fun and empowerment as it addresses the ‘universal awkwardness associated with getting fit’.
This third iteration of the multi-platform initiative is spearheaded by a hero film that uses gentle, authentic, humorous moments in an attempt to engage and resonate with those who were once or are now new to physical exercise and endeavour.
The work turns the spotlight away from traditional sport and on to the idea of women trying, failing, and trying again at physical exercise.
The scenes range from kitchen hula hooping in the kitchen, to park runs with a pushchair whilst listening to Barbra Streisand’s ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’.
This lead hero spot comes in 60-second
and 30-second versions.
Sport England’s objective for the commercial is to drive home the message that whatever exercise a person does, it all counts.
This is a social and digital campaign and the spot will not run on television (as the initial wave of This Girl Can work did) as the strategy has been created to allow Sport England to spend it budget most effectively by targeting ‘different groups with different content to maximise cost effectiveness’.
The video led phase will be supported by a range of local partner activations with leisure centres, community groups and charities around the UK.
The public body’s tactic to target women from all economic backgrounds came following its own 2018 research which showed that UK citizens are more than twice as likely to be inactive if they are a woman working in a shop or call centre, or doing much more routine-based, lower-paid work than managerial professions.
“Although we’ve successfully inspired three million women to be more active since launching in 2015, we know that for some reason the images and settings didn’t feel as relevant to [some women’s] lives,” said Sport England strategy head Kate Dale.
“There were significant inequalities that really worried us as that leads to other inequalities in life – wellbeing outcomes, mental outcomes…it impacts on quality and longevity of life. That’s something we’re tackling.”
“What we never wanted to do was [create a] This Girl Can: the greatest hits,” she explained. “They all feel very different. I love the humour in this one – I think those moments of truth will be really important to the target audience this time around.”
The concept was developed with Sport England’s agency FCB Inferno – which also developed the previous versions of This Girl Can, while the hero film was directed by Georgi Banks-Davies.
Comment:
This light-hearted activation approach contrasts with last year’s more empowering and epic ‘Phenomenal Woman’.
The latest phase complete a trilogy of approaches for This Girl Can: which has now tackled individual sports, team sports and non-traditional sports.
This fresh work follows in the brilliant, award-winning footsteps of the previous iterations of #ThisGirlCan from 2014 (see case study), 2015 (see case study) and 2017 (see case study).
Links:
Sport England
https://www.youtube.com/user/thisgirlcanuk
https://www.facebook.com/pages/This-Girl-Can/1486200494975441?ref=profile
https://plus.google.com/106091288943299282651/videos
https://twitter.com/ThisGirlCanUK
#ThisGirlCan
http://instagram.com/thisgirlcanuk
FCB Inferno
