Laying the audience insight and movement foundations for one of the most celebrated behaviour change campaigns of the last decade
Sport England - ‘This Girl Can’
The challenge
Women and girls in England were consistently less active than men, despite 75% saying they wanted to do more sport and exercise. Research showed a persistent enjoyment and confidence gap, with fear of judgement, body image and not feeling 'good enough' acting as powerful barriers to participation. Worse, the aspirational imagery sport marketing had always used, slim, glowing, high-performing, was actively pushing women away rather than inspiring them. Sport and exercise simply didn't feel designed around women's real lives.
The insight
The research revealed that aspiration itself needed to be redefined. Not about achievement or appearance — but about confidence, permission and the freedom to participate on your own terms, whatever you looked like or however well you performed. Changing that required a social movement, not a marketing campaign.
What I did
Working with Women in Sport’s (then the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation), I led the audience segmentation and insight programme , combining quantitative research, qualitative focus groups and data analytics to map the motivations, barriers and drivers across key segments of women aged 25-54, ranging from attitudinal to practical. I developed the early social movement strategy and the She Moves platform, shaping the underlying audience framework, values and narrative that would later provide the strategic foundation for Sport England's This Girl Can brief and campaign development.
The impact
This Girl Can launched in January 2015, built directly on this strategic and insight foundation. It has since become one of the most celebrated behaviour change campaigns in the world — inspiring over 3.9 million women to get more active, significantly narrowing the gender gap in participation, and winning major awards including D&AD, Campaign Media Week and the Marketing Society. Now in its third phase, the campaign continues to evolve, but the insight at its heart remains the same.
Read Sport England's This Girl Can insight and campaign research