In England, two million fewer women than men were exercising regularly, despite 75% of these women saying they wanted to be more active. Existing sports advertising, the London 2012 Olympics and the obvious health benefits had failed to inspire them. Clearly, we needed a different approach. We discovered that a unifying barrier standing between women and exercise was the fear of being judged – for anything from “wobbly bits” to “sweat patches”. This Girl Can tackles this head on, featuring street-cast women who are already out there jiggling, wiggling and perspiring with pride. Prior to the main launch, we seeded the conversation online with empowering content films and proactively responded to tweets about exercise anxiety with encouragement and support. A 90’ TV spot then followed, supported by outdoor and digital. Over 29 million views later, women all over the world have been inspired to become girls who can.

We open on a young woman making her way confidently through a locker room, before adjusting her bikini bottoms with a twang of the elastic. What follows is an endorphin-stirring celebration of women of all sizes and abilities, running, punching, kicking, rowing, throwing and diving like they just don’t care. ‘This Girl Can’ rejects the idealised imagery of women in sports advertising and instead heroes them in their wonderful reality – cellulite and sweaty faces included. The pace of the edit mimics an exercise routine: building up, pausing for breath, continuing to a climax before finally slumping in a shattered heap, all in sync to Missy Elliott’s ‘Get Ur Freak On’.

With more than 29 million views online and over 700 million media impressions, the campaign has received an overwhelmingly positive response. At launch it trended on Twitter, made it into Google’s Hot Trends and Top 12 Trending Searches.

We have gained 206,000 fans on Facebook, 61,900 Twitter followers and received coverage in over 65 countries without any international spend.

We have seen a 720% increase in prompted campaign awareness, and our social sentiment has been consistently encouraging, with a 98% positive response.

Most importantly, we’re seeing the impact of the campaign on women’s exercise levels and attitudes towards activity. While quantitative behaviour change results are still to come, women worldwide have been telling us about the exercise they’ve done and the confidence they’ve felt as a result of This Girl Can.