ParticipACTION Gets Canadians to Make Room for Movement and Activity

ParticipACTION, an iconic Canadian non-profit charitable organisation, has been helping Canadians move more where they live, learn, work and play since 1971.  

ParticipACTION’s latest campaign, developed by creative agency Zulu Alpha Kilo, is part of a new brand platform called 'Let’s make room to move' which encourages Canadians to make room in their daily lives for movement and activity. 'Watch & Move' is an idea that cleverly embraces a perceived ‘enemy,’ screen time, to get Canadians up and moving. The campaign gamifies everyday screen time content by attaching movement prompts to popular TV and online content tropes. By analysing programs and content we identified cliches, signature repeated catch phrases and guaranteed actions which then became prompts for movement while watching. 

The campaign features a series of contextually placed short videos that encourage Canadians to make room to move while watching their favourite shows and content. Helping Canadians get active within their already established habits rather than asking them to stop. 

“The idea is not to judge and try to dissuade people from watching their favourite programming but  rather to find a way to covertly sneak movement into their established behaviour,” explains Jenny Glover, Z.A.K.'s chief creative officer. 

The paid media campaign, planned and executed by M&K Media, will drive reach and engagement to encourage Canadians to Watch & Move as they consume their favourite and highly valued premium content. The custom paid media campaign was crafted to carefully amplify Watch & Move in strategically hand-picked contextual media placements that intercept the audience when they are consuming content. M&K Media selected key vendor partners to align with and create custom media partnerships that seamlessly integrate Watch & Move into the viewers content experiences.  

The campaign will run on video channels including Linear TV, Streaming platforms, social and other video placements. Key vendors selected include: Netflix Canada, Roku, Pluto, Rogers Sports Media & more.  

Rebecca Jones, senior director of marketing and communications at ParticpACTION says, “Watch & Move is intended to break down barriers to physical activity and get people moving. Canadians spend a lot of time watching and consuming content, we want to remind them that it’s the perfect time to sneak in movement.” 

Jill McDonald, president of M&K Media says, “We are thrilled to see this come to life and bring Watch & Move to audiences all over Canada. From a media planning and buying perspective, this campaign is unique and highly customised due to the contextual nature of the buy. Each placement has been hand picked to contextually aligned to the moment in time and content the viewer is consuming. M&K was very strategic in placement and vendor partner selection to ensure we show up in highly premium streaming and linear environments the include content like comedy, drama, reality, live sport, appointment linear viewing and more.” 

M&K Media handled the media planning, buying and negotiation of paid media campaign. Zulu Alpha Kilo was responsible for creative strategy and execution