The start of a New Year is always filled with the best intentions. Resolutions are made with the hope of turning personal goals and ambitions into action.
However, if you’re like me and find it a challenge to change your spots, by now you’ve most likely cancelled your gym membership and returned your spandex. So how do we translate good intentions into actual behaviour change that sticks?
There’s no doubt that the greatest behaviour change campaigns are those which have quality research and data at their heart. Understanding audience insights is a powerful tool for creating relevant stories that get under the skin of target audience groups for delivering impact.
This Girl Can is a perfect example of an active lifestyle campaign with a compelling message that has reached millions of women with a call to get active, and fall back in love with exercise and sport.
Bringing a simple yet powerful message to life with the aim of influencing behaviour change was a proposition put forward to Stripe and our partner The Leith Agency as part of our activation of Strathmore water’s latest Do More Challenge campaign.
The purpose of the campaign was a simple one – to encourage Scots to get active and lead healthier lifestyles.
Research revealed that lots of barriers exist which prevent people from engaging with exercise, including accessibility, time and convenience. While we discovered there is no one size fits all approach, people were more likely to engage in activities that felt inclusive and open to all ages and abilities, as well as being affordable and fun to participate in.
The campaign focused on promoting participation in cycling, swimming and running, and to help reach more Scots we recruited the support of Olympic and Paralympic heroes, cyclist Katie Archibald, swimmer Ross Murdoch and wheelchair racer Samantha Kinghorn.
Known as Team Strathmore, the athletes launched the Strathmore Do More Challenge to encourage Scots to reach for their trainers, hop on their bikes and put on their swimwear, with a competition to win a once in a lifetime training experience with our Olympic and Paralympic stars.
Running on Facebook, Twitter and via a targeted media partnership, entries flooded in from across Scotland. Winners were chosen based on the best photos of them taking part in one of the three sports. 36 winners, from Dundee to the Isle of Bute, attended the events which were held in Glasgow at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre, Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and Emirates Arena.
Video credit: Gavin Sturgeon
Thanks to Katie, Ross and Samantha and their coaches, the events were a fantastic success and an example of how the positive role of athlete ambassadors can help brands to engage more deeply and create memorable experiences with their audiences. The personal experience of watching an Olympic gold medalist hurtle round the Velodrome track also had a profound effect on my own training goals. Since then I’ve been inspired to start cycling to work.
OK so it’s only been a week, but a simple message delivered in a dynamic and engaging way can shift perceptions – because doing more is actually easier than you think.
