Case Study: This Girl Can: Building Awareness

While building brand awareness with a campaign is fairly intuitive, driving tangible change among consumers is more challenging. Sport England, a government organization with the mission of giving all individuals access to athletics no matter their age, background, or ability, successfully accomplished this with its $$This Girl Can$$ campaign. Initially aimed at educating the public on the significant gender gap in sports, the messaging also began to inspire real action.

In England, two million fewer women play sports than men, despite $75$ percent of women sampled stating that they want to be more active. Understanding why this was the case was a crucial first step. Sport England$$s research uncovered that fear of judgment from others was the primary reason holding women back from sports. However, the type of judgment varied widely$$including that they weren$$t fit enough, they were being too selfish with their time $($particularly among mothers$),$ or they weren$$t skilled enough.

After gathering these insights, the marketing team understood that the heart of the campaign would need to focus on breaking down the perception regarding what being active means and looks like. The campaign, anchored by TV commercials, featured women of all sizes, ages, and fitness abilities engaging in sports. The ads used humble and entertaining language to relate to women who were new to sports. For example, a popular ad said $$I$$m slow, but I$$m lapping everyone on the couch.$$

Sport England$$s ability to create a campaign that stood out from traditional sports advertising ensured that the ads would capture attention. The campaign went on to yield extremely successful results. Upon its launch, it garnered $37$ million people views on Facebook and YouTube, and $500,000$ members joined the $$This Girl Can$$ online community. Most importantly, Sport England estimated that $50,000$ more women engaged in sports.

Questions:

$1.$ Develop an ad campaign for $$This Girl Can$$ that would motivate women who felt that engaging in sports was a sign that they were too selfish with their time.

$2.$ What types of partnerships and sponsorships would reinforce this brand and further increase the number of women engaged in sports?