It’s hard to believe that it has been one year since the This Girl Can agency and client team gathered nervously around the TV at FCB Inferno in anticipation of Coronation Street, and the coveted advert break featuring our flagship This Girl Can TVC.
The girls, jiggling and sweating burst onto TV screens around England. Lines like “Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox” and “I kick balls, deal with it” hit the screen and a whole new attitude to women’s sport was born. We featured women of all shapes, sizes and sporting abilities. We wanted to tell the real story of women who exercise, using images that are the complete opposite of the idealised and stylised images of women we often see.
We could never have imagined the impact the campaign has had. The response was immediate. The internet exploded with the hashtag #ThisGirlCan and within an hour it was trending at number 2 on Twitter. The campaign resonated with women everywhere: stories were shared about the fear of the gym, lycra, not-knowing-the-moves and many more. Sharing the fear of being judged led girls to encourage each other with a ‘don’t give a damn’ attitude; an attitude that all the girls in the campaign radiated.
But the amazing thing about this campaign was that not only were people discussing exercise, they were doing it. All over the country women were dusting off sports bras and pulling out their trainers. Findings from new independent research, carried out by analysts from TNS BRMB, released today on the campaign’s first birthday show 2.8 million 14-40 year old women who recognise the campaign say they’ve done some or more activity as a result, 1.6 million of whom say they’ve actually started exercising.
Socially, the campaign has shown no signs of slowing down either. The films have been viewed 37 million times on the campaigns YouTube and Facebook channels, and 540,000 women and girls have joined the ever growing This Girl Can social media community. Perhaps most impressively however, the campaign has been talked about on social media every single day since it launched one year ago. And the campaign has been spoken about in over 110 countries across the world.
And this isn’t the end, Sport England has partnered with Marks & Spencer to launch a full active wear clothing range. The range is available online and across 36 M&S stores nationwide.
Take a look at some of the fantastic coverage Sport England has received in the links below.
Empowering women – They’ve also tweeted a link to their 3.4k followers.
Great queens at Great Queen Street
Yet another remarkable Christmas party at FCB Inferno.
Good news
FCB Inferno has won the global xDrive pitch.
Campaign’s 2015 Annual
A few reasons to celebrate tonight.
A coffee brand to tackle homelessness
We are working with the Big Issue to train homeless people as baristas, giving them the skills and tools to sell the best coffee around, via state of the art carts and machines.