Background

GO2 is an active living initiative launched in June 2006 by a consortium of government and not-for-profit groups in order to encourage Calgarians of all ages and abilities to engage in active lifestyles.

The group was formed to unite the active living efforts of these various organizations in order to achieve higher visibility and create a larger impact on their target audience.

Communications Objectives:

• To increase awareness of the need for physical activity and encourage people to maintain an active lifestyle. 
• Provide education regarding the opportunities available to participate in an active lifestyle.
• Demonstrate why active living is important in order to build credibility. 
• Ensure consistent messaging in all partner’s active living efforts.
• Build equity in GO2’s identity and brand.

Strut's Solution

The new initiative required a strong identity, something that would set it apart from older active living organizations and initiatives. The identity needed to be visually impactful, appeal to a mainstream audience, and in particular appeal strongly to youth, and parents of children. The logo presents itself as highly energetic and vibrant. The arrows support the idea that there are many options and opportunities for everyone to participate in a healthy, active lifestyle.

Several different taglines were developed and presented to the test audience, to help support the logo. The audience confirmed our favorite line “Whatever gets you going”. The tagline further communicates the idea that it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you get active doing whatever it is you enjoy doing.

Strut designed and developed the web site based on a full content management system which allows GO2 staff, and partner organizations to make their own updates to the site. Emphasis was placed on making information easily browsable and visually interesting, so the site would become a strong resource to a wide audience. 

The site was designed to present the audience with a wide range of physical activity options like cycling, skiing, curling, and climbing — browsable by difficulty and seasonal suitability — as well as sports facilities run by the various partner organizations.

The GO2 web site serves as a central listing for the public to access news and events related to fitness and healthy living. This one-stop resource provides, as examples, schedules for The City of Calgary’s outdoor pools, new programs and camps offered  by the YMCA, notices of upcoming marathons, and information about the new Children's Fitness Tax Credit.

To support the launch and create an early baseline of awareness with the public, a strong advertising campaign was created, and backed by supporting communications and marketing material.

A series of print, outdoor and transit ads were developed around the idea of identifying activities and facilities that people of any fitness level (across the full spectrum of age groups) could use to improve their level of daily activity. The series of ads encouraged the population to GO2...the park, GO2...the pool, GO2...the mountains, etc. and directed them to the web site. Additional ads were created to address specific targets, for example the particularly hard to break-through-to youth demographic.

Results

After the launch feedback from the partner organizations was extremely positive and awareness of the initiative ranked very high with target audiences. 

The GO2 awareness campaign was launched in June 2006, and received 295,914 web page views, from 8,148 unique visitors in the first month. With each unique visitor viewing dozens of information, news and activity pages, it’s clear the site represented a valuable resource for our target audience.

While the awareness campaign was running over the summer and into the fall web traffic was sustained, peaking at 15,539 unique visitors that October. While page visits backed off this volume at the end of the main awareness campaign, the site was still receiving over 9,000 unique monthly visitors the following January.