This Girl Can Sport England ’ s Ground Breaking Campaign-Phase One ( November 2014 to November 2015 ) Sport England

Sport England is the government agency responsible for grassroots sport. Our primary purpose is to get more people playing sport and being active. We achieve this by investing National Lottery and Government funding in a wide range of projects, programmes and organisations that get more people taking part in many different types of sport and exercise. Our investment strategy is based on evidence and insight and we deliberately place an emphasis on behaviour change and social marketing principles and techniques to encourage more people to play sport, and support our investment partners to adopt these methods too. This Girl Can is Sport Englandʼs behaviour change campaign to get more women active. It was launched in January 2015 and is funded by the National Lottery. In England, 1.75 million fewer women than men were exercising regularly. Despite the best efforts of sports brands, medical experts, the London 2012 Olympics & investment in facilities, this gap had


Introduction
Sport England is the government agency responsible for grassroots sport.Our primary purpose is to get more people playing sport and being active.
We achieve this by investing National Lottery and Government funding in a wide range of projects, programmes and organisations that get more people taking part in many different types of sport and exercise.
Our investment strategy is based on evidence and insight and we deliberately place an emphasis on behaviour change and social marketing principles and techniques to encourage more people to play sport, and support our investment partners to adopt these methods too.
This Girl Can is Sport Englandʼs behaviour change campaign to get more women active.It was launched in January 2015 and is funded by the National Lottery.
In England, 1.75 million fewer women than men were exercising regularly.Despite the best efforts of sports brands, medical experts, the London 2012 Olympics & investment in facilities, this gap had remained stubbornly large.
As the government agency for grassroots sport, we 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."Specifically, our objectives were: ・To increase participation in sport and exercise among women and girls aged 14 to 40 ・To change how women and girls aged 14 to 40 feel and think about exercising and playing sport ・To change the opportunities available to women to be active We used an innovative approach to achieve maximum impact.The campaign was shaped by our extensive insight and reflected what women told us at all stages, from campaign planning, to creative development and delivery.
We identified a fear of judgement as the most significant barrier to being more active and designed the campaign to liberate women from this fear.We are seeing strong evidence that This Girl Can has already inspired more women to take part in sport and physical activity.
To date, 2.8 million women and girls in England have been inspired to get active by Sport Englandʼs This Girl Can campaign.(Kantar Public Tracker, November 2015) The reach of the campaign and the reaction to itboth in our target audience in England and across the world -has been extraordinary, and has surpassed all the industry norms.

The insight that unlocked the behaviour change
We know that women know the benefits of exercise.They feel guilty already.In fact, 75% of women said they wanted to do more exercise.But something was stopping them.Finding that barrier would be the key to unlocking a change in behaviour.
As might be expected with an audience spanning 26 years and varying life-stages, the barriers to exercise were many & incredibly diverse.
No single barrier was exclusive to an age group, socio-demographic group or life-stage.At any point, a woman might have one barrier or multiple, all constantly shifting with the world around her.
There was a clear set of barriers the marketing alone couldnʼt solve: logistics.The absence of time, money or childcare are key barriers, but could not be addressed by advertising.
Removing the ʻlogisticsʼ barriers from a long list of barriers identified a pattern that had not previously been spotted.
Every remaining barrier could be traced back to something truly unique, universal, fresh and emotionally powerful: The fear of judgement.
It was fear that was stopping women from exercising.Women were worried about being judged on their appearance, during and after exercise; on their ability, whether they were a beginner or ʻtoo goodʼ; or for spending time exercising instead of prioritising their children or studying.The execution of the campaign stayed true to the insight This Girl Can was designed to liberate women from the judgements that hold them back.The campaign has developed to support and help women manage their barriers to being active, recognising the many steps to long-term behaviour change.
We recognised that both active and non-active women were fearful of being judged and didnʼ t realise that others felt the same way.Through encouraging conversation and addressing these judgements, This Girl Can created a moment of realisation that they are not alone, and in turn a positive sense of solidarity."The only thing I remember seeing is that ʻThis Girl Canʼ advert where they are basically trying to say that no matter your size, age etc. we can all do it if we try and that we're all in the same position when trying to get fit.I love this advert because it reminds me of me -ha, Iʼm always self-conscious when I'm in a gym or feeling like I'm not fit enough !" Future Thinking Cohort Study, 2016 Our insight also told us that an overwhelming number of women felt distanced from exercise, due to the portrayal of women and exercise in society.The usual combination of looking perfect and excelling at activity often makes it feel like an exclusive club theyʼre not invited to, and so This Girl Can set out to change this.
By celebrating a realistic vision of women and ) to reach women during the course of their everyday lives.Recognising the role that self-identification plays in affecting behaviour change and our growing This Girl Can community who very much felt part of a movement, we also created a This Girl Can app.The app allows women to create their own This Girl Can poster, using the campaignʼ s mantras (such as ʻI kick balls.Deal with itʼ and ʻHot and not botheredʼ).In addition, the website (www.thisgirlcan.co.uk) provides helpful advice and signposting to women who want to become more active."I would definitely agree that This Girl Can is brave, radical and progressive.The campaign is a first of its kind by using real women to help other women summon up the courage to get active."Poorna Bell, Executive Editor and Global Lifestyle Head, The Huffington Post.
"Itʼs not selling you anything.It doesnʼt want you to buy some miracle product, try a new workout or even get into better shape.It just wants you to realise that youʼ re worthy of looking after your body too."Taylor Anderson, Editor of Cosmo Body: .

This Girl Can is more than an advertising campaign
The key to achieving success in converting this great response into more women playing sport is our work with our partners -sports, local government, schools, colleges, universities, brands, and charities.
At the launch of the campaign, Sport England created a suite of free tools and resources for registered partners to use to activate the campaign and get more women active.As well as marketing materials and imagery, the toolkit also includes access to the insight at the heart of the campaign.
Every organisation who registered for free as a ʻSupporterʼ of This Girl Can is able to access these and 8, 000 organisations have signed up as registered ʻSupportersʼ, from National Governing Bodies (NGBs) of sports including England Netball and England Golf, to charities including Breast Cancer Now to delivery organisations such as County Sports Partnerships (CSPs), local authorities and leisure operators.
We also published a practical guide on engaging women and girls in sport for partners -to ensure our lessons are shared as widely as possible.
There are two key factors to why the campaign was so well received by women: ・The insight-driven creative: The qualitative research allowed for the fear of judgement to be fully understood, and this heavily informed the creative work.This enabled the resulting campaign to strike a chord with our target audience and become close to their hearts, as well as making the campaign more robust from any external criticisms.・The unconventional approach: Allowing the creative to break both Government and Future Thinking Cohort Study, 2016 sporting advertising conventions meant that the campaign was standout, fresh and newsworthy.Increasing the diversity of women and barriers featured in the campaign intensified its relevance and likeability.

The campaign was highly engaging
・The campaign had over 95m views ・Online engagement was very high -733, 000 mentions in social media ・We created a very large and active social community -581,000 fans/followers across all platforms with over 1.2 m visits to the website ・Awareness of the campaign peaked at 51% amongst women aged 14 to 40 (Kantar Public Tracker, November 2015) Recognition of the campaign remained high throughout year one with good recall of key campaign messages, even in the absence of above the line activity.
•6.8 million (72%) women aged 14-40 recognised the This Girl Can advert (Kantar Public Tracker, November 2015) The campaign has been talked about over a thousand times every day on social media since the campaign was launched on 12 January 2015 The campaign was talked about in over 110 countries The campaign is motivating women and personal resonance of This Girl Can has increased (Kantar Public Tracker, 2015) •70% women report being motivated when shown the advert (March 2015).This puts This Girl Can in the top group of adverts for motivation •4.8 million (71%) of brand recognisers agree ʻThis Girl Can is aimed at people like meʼ (up from 3.7 million (59%) in March 2015) Partners used the campaign assets (spreading the message further) Schools, offices, clubs and societies all got behind the campaign.They used the logo & imagery and created their own content.Schools ran special classes on ʻconfidenceʼ using the ad to start the conversation & they ran activity weeks, put up large wall displays and encouraged girls to post their out-of-school activity too.
Schools and clubs made videos that they posted online showing what activity they did and welcoming new members of every level.
Wembley Stadium (the National Soccer Stadium), asked if they could run the ad for free on their massive electronic screen.And the BBC even recreated our ad using female TV presenters.
Over 8,000 partners have signed up to use our Partner Toolkit.This encompasses all kinds of organisations from core cities across the country right down to individual Zumba teachers.
The highest profile partnership has been with M&S, where we created two t-shirt ranges and an entire leisurewear range.All sold out !

The campaign had an extremely positive impact on womenʼs attitudes towards activity
We ran an online panel study, alongside our quantitative tracking study, with the objective of understanding in depth the impact on a cohort of women in England and any related change in behaviour and activity.The respondents were not aware that the panel was being run by This Girl Can so we were able to see the campaignʼs natural effect on them.The research concluded: 'Almost all who have viewed the campaign talk of a shift in feeling -an increase in motivation to participate in sport and exerciseʼ.

Future Thinking Cohort Study, 2016
The most recent wave of quantitative tracking data shows the communication worked by increasing the percentage of women who felt confident enough to stop caring about what others thought of them.And it helped women feel that they belonged when they were active.
NB The confidence question was only added in July 2015 (six months after launch).

But most importantly, This Girl Can is changing behaviour
We have been inundated with women attributing their return to exercise directly to the campaign.It has encouraged them to do something that they may have not done otherwise, and they are recognising the effect and thanking This Girl Can for it: ・Our tracking study asked women what influence the campaign had had on their activity levels.If we extrapolate it up to national population levels it tells us that: •2.8 million women have been more active as a result of seeing the campaign.And we now know even more about how women navigate in and out of activity Barriers donʼt go away; itʼs about managing them -itʼs about gathering the confidence to go ahead in spite of them.The impact of barriers on behaviour is reduced with activity, but itʼs an on-going battle.
This Girl Can plays a strong role at each stage of the activity journey.
Life stage changes nudge women in and out of activity.There are some key trigger points and out of routine opportunities that the campaign could play to.
Even when a routine is established, small things (as well as big events) can de-rail progress and create a set-back.Anything from a change in schedule or ʻfalling off the diet wagonʼ, to family issues or illness can impact motivation to exercise, and judgement barriers start to take-over.
But they can also be moments of positive change.
Crucially, we understand that developing confidence leads to action and then helps build resilience -but itʼs a constant battle !Recognising Once a week sport participation (1×30) by gender,millions Source：Sport Englandʼ s Active People results for the 12 months to the period shown on the chart.Dotted line showed between APS1 and APS2 where there was no data collection  this cycle as something everyone goes through leads to a sense of belonging.Itʼs ok to have breaks or ʻwobblesʼ.As much as most women have a fear of judgement in common, theyʼ re also not alone in having set-backs and plucking up the confidence to go back.
The learning we have gained from the first year of the campaign has been huge and has fed directly back into the development of This Girl Can phase two.
But we know this alone cannot change the way sport is presented to women.The provision of sport end exercise needs to be right too.Thatʼs why we have published a practical guide for deliverers of sport that are keen to engage more women and offer them more appealing ways of becoming active.
•Of those, 1.6 million have started or re-started exercise as a result of seeing the campaign.(Kantar Public Tracker, Reminding myself and having other sources reminding me that itʼ s OK, Iʼ m not alone and itʼ s good for me Iʼ m part of this!Itʼ s not just me!