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This Girl Can Marketing

'This Girl Can Run' campaign hits its stride encouraging 28,000 new runners

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

September 12, 2016 | 3 min read

England Athletics has given an insight into the success of its ‘This Girl Can Run’ campaign, revealing that it helped empower 28,000 women to overcome their body conscious worries and start running.

This Girl Can Run

this girl can Run

Inspired by the reception of Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign, England Athletics launched its own iteration in an attempt to build on the momentum of the movement and inspire more women to break down the societal barriers to physical activity and take up running.

Now 15 months on, the campaign, created by eight&four, has revealed that as well as helping 28,000 women to start running, it engages with over 120,000 women every day across its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels.

A survey of its Facebook community showed that 95 per cent of the community now run at least once a week, with over a third of the group (36 per cent) saying that they either started to run or returned to running as a direct result of the campaign.

Of those who have been influenced to run by the campaign, 20 per cent stated that they have some form of disability and 67 per cent said they were completely new to running.

One of those inspired by the campaign is Sam Mollaghan who said: “Everything about the campaign has inspired me. It’s helped me to overcome negative thinking about myself and has made me more confident.

“My advice to anyone thinking about starting to run is to go for it. Follow This Girl Can Run online and don't worry about your ability or being judged by others. I've completely surprised myself by what I’ve been able to achieve. Every time I talk about This Girl Can Run it's with a smile on my face.”

Jenny O’Brien, marketing and campaigns manager at England Athletics said: “We had some really ambitious aims for this campaign in terms of the number of women in England we wanted to get running and are thrilled with how far we’ve come so far. To have inspired 28,000 women to run more regularly is a great start and we are looking forward to building on that success over the coming months and years.”

Kate Ross, managing director at eight&four added: “Being able to be part of such a worthwhile project and deliver returns that have had a real and tangible impact of women’s behaviour across the country is something we are immensely proud of and we look forward to seeing women’s response to the next phase of the campaign.“

England Athletics will continue to evolve the This Girl Can Run campaign over the next six months and will look to build on it by listening to the community and utilising insights from Women in Sport to understand how to support women to continue running as the darker winter nights draw in.

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