2022 Gold Sports

Agency: 23red

Client: Sport England and Strava

Campaign Name: Make Your Comeback

Campaign Overview

Regular physical activity plays a key role in improving women's physical and mental health. With a third of women taking a break from exercise, exacerbated by the pandemic when classes, gyms and team sports paused, they needed help to rediscover the joy of movement.

Strategy

Research showed that for 43% of women, feeling unfit held them back. For many more, emotional support was crucial to getting active again. The strategy was to motivate and facilitate this by helping them rediscover the joys of movement. This focused on three key phases.

Normalise helped women see that those around them had taken breaks from activity too; it wasn't uncommon. The notion that it was too late to start again was challenged, showing comebacks could happen at any time.

Mobilise gave women the key tools to get active - a supportive social community through the This Girl Can Club on Strava, and an opportunity to set goals and form habits.

Maintain encouraged women to keep going, continuing to grow support and recognising one another's achievements on the This Girl Can club.

Creativity

Make Your Comeback - a set of inspiring short stories on film, following the real-life comebacks of different individuals to show how they overcame barriers and got moving again after a break.

The films documented the honest stories of three very different individuals to appeal to the broad audience, showcasing the highs and lows, and how the support of their family and friends helped them to overcome various challenges.

Each story was filmed in contributors' homes and local areas, to ensure authenticity with an upbeat, motivational track to bring them to life. Creative was used across paid social ads, eCRM and in-app messaging to target lapsed women users of Strava as well as This Girl Can fans.

Further amplification occurred via a toolkit of assets shared with This Girl Can partners, enabling grass-root organisations to provide opportunities for women to be active and get behind the campaign

Results

In just seven weeks, more than 18,500 individuals joined the This Girl Can Club, sharing more than 30,000 supportive comments and inspiration for other women in the group. Members logged 254,000 activities on Strava during the campaign period.

The Make Your Comeback Challenge went global with 155,000 people signing up and demonstrating the strength of the campaign. Of the 39,000 UK women who took part in the challenge (KPI: 30,000), 34,000 completed it - a completion rate of 89%, showing the strategy helped to drive engagement across the period.

Research demonstrated the campaign had a significant impact, with four out of five women stating it’s okay to take breaks in activity. Some 69% of women who took part in the campaign stated they were now doing more exercise than before it ran; a significant increase on the control group

The Team

23red - Emma Palmer-Taylor, Business Director - John Coote, Senior Account Director - Milly Hindle, Senior Account Manager - Tristan Cavanagh, Creative Director - Daryll Arthur, Senior Art Director - Ali Omar, Senior Copywriter - Simon Mutter, Strategy & Planning Partner - Rob Garner, Head of Design - Verity Jones, Social Lead - Sunny Juttla, Head of Studio - Ben Kingsland, Artwork - Philippa Dunning, Creative Services Director - Rachel Rollinson, Producer

Strava - Teddy Page, Senior Marketing Manager, UK - Ben Ralphs, Community Associate, UK - Ian Elliot, Senior Director, Brand Marketing & Social Impact - Jeanne Mack, Senior Copywriter - Byron Parr, Director, Brand Design

Sport England - Amy Crees, Head of Business Development - Kate Dale, Director of Marketing - Scott Radcliffe, Senior Manager, Business Development & Partnerships - Karen Campbell, Head of Social Media - Marga Sanz Anchelergues, Senior Content Editor - Nilen Bhatt, Senior Research & Evaluation Manager - Alice Stride, Head of Media - Simon Osborn, Head of Digital & Content - Phil Jones, Senior Content Editor - Jasmira Bhabra, Social Media Executive

Contributors

Fat Rat Film, Count To Ten, and Seven Hills