To celebrate the positive impact of families exercising together, Sport England has launched a series of short films, inspired by Disney, that show mums engaging in home-based exercise routines with their children, getting them involved by dancing together to their favourite Disney music.
With Sport England research showing that six in ten (61%) mums would feel guilty about taking time to exercise, rather than spending time with their family, This Girl Can set out to find a partner that could help create fun, family moments that got mums and kids moving together.
Evidence also showed that enjoyment is the number one driver that motivates children to get active, whilst mothers have a greater influence on their children’s activity levels compared to fathers, and seven in ten (69%) mums think it is important for their children to see them exercising.
As a result, This Girl Can realised that first and foremost, it was critical that the content be enjoyable, that there be no ‘wrong moves’ and perhaps most importantly that viewers could take inspiration from the series and implement similar routines in their own lives.
With this in mind, partnering with Disney Healthy Living, which uses the power of its characters to inspire families to get active, was the ideal solution.
The resulting Disney-inspired dance-along films offer a fun way for mums and kids to be active together through play, whilst helping their children to develop healthy attitudes towards physical activity.
Kate Dale, This Girl Can’s Campaign Lead said; “We wanted to create something that unlocked the “fun” factor of moving around, based on the ways real mums and kids get moving. That’s why we invited real families from across England to dance around to Disney tracks they love, including songs from The Little Mermaid, Moana, The Jungle Book, and the new Disney Channel Original Movie, Descendants 3.”
Disney UK’s involvement, which forms part of its wider Healthy Living initiative, represents the first time that This Girl Can has worked with a brand partner to create bespoke content.
It marks the first of several key partnerships launching over the next year to create new opportunities for women to get active by embedding their convention-busting messaging into bigger brands and platforms – thereby helping mums find ways to get moving that they’ve never thought of before.
Kate Dale continues: “We knew we wanted to open the door to brand partners, but we needed to protect the integrity of the movement and ensure that any partnerships were fully aligned with the spirit of This Girl Can.
“We have shared goals with the Disney Healthy Living initiative – to inspire families to get active – so Disney made the perfect partner for a campaign that saw us targeting families for the first time. Disney collaborated with us closely to ensure that the content upheld both our values, lending us some of the world’s most beloved songs to help inspire families to get active. The genuinely fun and engaging videos we created together are testament to the strength of the partnership.”
This Girl Can is all about encouraging and celebrating women getting active, no matter how they like to do it and regardless of shape, size, age or ability. The partnership with Disney will allow it to harness the global appeal of its much-loved music to take this message far and wide, tapping into Disney’s huge social audience to ensure maximum, highly targeted reach to families across the world.
Marianthi O’Dwyer, Vice President, Healthy Living UK at The Walt Disney Company: “We know from Sport England research that children of active mothers are more likely to grow into active adults, so working with This Girl Can to create fun, authentic content that uses the power of Disney story-telling to inspire mums and kids to have fun while breaking a sweat, is perfectly aligned with our Disney Healthy Living strategy. The fun dance-along videos offer a fantastic resource for mums looking to improve not only their own fitness, but also their children’s long-term health and we hope families across the UK enjoy getting active to these wonderful Disney songs.”
This Girl Can put out a Facebook post which invited families who love to dance together to send in videos of themselves. The result was an astonishing number of submissions, the overwhelming majority from mothers and daughters. As a result, the team were able to cast real families from the This Girl Can community to take part in this first series of short films.
The five three-minute films were created by FCB Inferno and produced by Fuel Content.
The videos can be viewed at https://www.thisgirlcan.co.uk/activities/disney-workouts/
