Stroke Some Birdies: This Campaign Bills Exercise as a Catalyst for Better Sex

As part of their latest brand platform work around how Everything gets better when you get active, ParticipACTION launched the next phase of its campaign that highlights how sex gets better when you get active. This is part of a long-term movement to help shift attitudes and perceptions beyond traditional benefits of physical activity, such as weight loss.

ParticipACTION’s research supports how regular physical activity has so many benefits for our bodies and mind, including that it can help promote increased blood flow throughout the body, even down below, which in turn boosts sexual feelings. Because of this, the latest campaign is an opportunity to get personal and remind Canadians about these surprising benefits of physical activity.

“We have the opportunity within our brand platform to showcase specific ‘betters’ to drive home the benefits of being active,” said Shauna Pichosky, VP of marketing and communications of ParticipACTION. “By flipping the equation, this allows us to shift perceptions and show Canadians that being physically active is not just about your physical appearance.”

The targeted campaign includes digital out-of-home posters in restaurants, social media content, and radio. Each poster features a suggestive image of sporting equipment such as a bike seat, a football, or two badminton birdies, with a double entendre headline that references the physical activity while alluding to sexual activity – ie. ‘Stroke some birdies. Sex gets better when you badminton’. Radio simply showcases the sounds of a physical activity like a squash game or Taekwondo match. At first the sounds are implied to be sexually suggestive before it’s revealed that they were actually just the sounds of a sports game. The spots are signed off with ‘Everything gets better when you get active’.

“We wanted to bring a new approach to communicating around physical activity, refresh the imagery and let ParticipACTION speak to different audiences in unique ways,” says Catherine Allen, creative director at Zulu. “We had an opportunity to showcase real meaning to the lives of Canadians by showing big, bold, unexpected visuals rather than the traditional visuals usually synonymous with being physically active.”

More information on how sex gets better when you get physically active as well as the many other benefits of physical activity can be found on ParticipACTION.com. This campaign launches in the wake of of the new ParticipACTION app that helps Canadians meet their personalised goal of physical activity minutes each week. The targeted campaign was developed in partnership with Cossette Media. Radio was produced by Toronto’s Cylinder Sound.