THIS GIRL CAN

Short List
TitleTHIS GIRL CAN
BrandSPORT ENGLAND
Product/ServiceSPORT ENGLAND
Category A01. Creative Effectiveness
Entrant FCB INFERNO London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation FCB INFERNO London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement CARAT London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production SOMESUCH London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Simon Cenamor & Raymond Chan FCB Inferno Copywriter & Art Director
Al Young FCB Inferno Chief Creative Officer
Owen Lee FCB Inferno Chief Creative Officer
Vicki Holgate FCB Inferno Executive Strategy Director
Nicola Willison FCB Inferno Strategist
Sharon Jiggins FCB Inferno Managing Director
Hollie Loxley FCB Inferno Account Director

Brief Explanation

Despite the best efforts of the biggest sports brands and the health and fitness industry, 1.75 million fewer women than men were exercising regularly in 2014 – a worryingly large and stubborn gender gap in England’s exercise participation levels. As the Government agency for grassroots sport, Sport England wanted to reduce this gender gap by: “getting more women from the ages of 14-40 regularly active and into sport, and to keep them playing.” We uncovered the universal barrier that was holding women back. Their myriad reasons for not exercising could be traced back to something truly unique, fresh and emotionally powerful… The fear of judgement The role for communications, therefore, became clear: To liberate women from the judgements that hold them back The resulting creative idea was ‘This Girl Can’ - a celebration of the triumph of attitude over society’s judgement. We championed active women across England who were doing their thing no matter how they did it or how they looked. The campaign proved very powerful and we hit our five core objectives: 1. Get partners to use the campaign assets (to spread the message further). 8,000 partners signed up to use our assets. Schools, offices, clubs, societies, even Wembley and the BBC, all got behind the campaign, using our logo & imagery to create their own content. 2. The campaign increased the number of women who feel comfortable & confident exercising. Our panel survey concluded that “almost all who have viewed the campaign talk of a shift in feeling – an increase in motivation to participate in sport and exercise.” (SPA Sept 2015). Also, the most recent wave of quantitative tracking data shows the communication worked by increasing the percentage of women who feel confident when exercising by +30% (TNS May 2016). 3. We significantly increased the number of women who are active. The tracking study revealed that 2.8 million women have been more active as a result of seeing the campaign. Of those, 1.6 million have started or re-started exercise as a result of seeing the campaign (TNS May 2016). 4. We also met our hardest objective - to significantly increase the number of women who are regularly active. In the year to April 2016, we have seen an additional 261,200 women become regularly active.(APS April 2016). 5. To significantly reduce the gender gap in regular sports participation levels by 2020. The gender gap has historically been very hard to close. Just before the campaign started the gender gap was 1.75m and increasing. As a result of This Girl Can, it has now reduced to 1.6m (APS October 2006 - Apr 2016). A very healthy Return on Marketing Investment This increase in women’s participation has an economic value to society and health benefits that can be valued. Using Sport England’s ‘Economic Value of Sport’ model, we estimated that the total value generated by the campaign was £291m. The total cost of the campaign was £9.9m which yields a very healthy ROMI of £28 for every £1 spent.