Overcoming Exercise’s biggest challenge — excuses. 

Every year exercise faces its biggest challenge — winter. Sunlight retreats, thermometers drop, and fairweather athletes pack away the shorts and prepare themselves for a season of hibernation. 

It’s no surprise then, that as the clocks go back, so too does enthusiasm for buying athletic gear; this poses a problem for one of the UK’s biggest sports retailers. So when Sports Direct asked us to help them with their winter campaign, we knew that to change buying habits, we had to change motivation.

We’ve all got excuses. This is how we show them who’s boss. 

We identified that the key to increasing sales was increasing motivation to move. Winter presented many obstacles to training: lack of daylight, lack of time between festive events, and lack of frost-friendly gear. In fact, whilst the majority of people recognise exercise’s importance for overall well being, 44% give in to their excuses in winter. Sports Direct needed to present the solution and the inspiration to continue summer’s good habits. 

“Beat The Quit” was developed as our creative platform. Inspired by motivational quotes, we personified ‘the quit’ instinct all athletes feel in colder months. ‘The quit’ could take on many forms, it could be the warmth of bed, the snooze button, after work drinks or TV binge. 

Once we’d made it clear who the enemy of winter training was, we gave athletes the motivation to overcome it. Working alongside director Zac Ella, we wrote and shot a 30” film for social and on demand. Full of energy and impact, this rallying cry reminded athletes that they were bigger than their excuses. 

A cast of models, influencers, and Olympic athletes ran alongside our protagonist, showing off the latest gear from Sports Direct’s partners. 

We wanted to make sure the creative direction embodied the feeling of ‘Beating The Quit’ — from cold winter weather, to motivational meltdowns. We also wanted it to be super flexible and adaptive to multiple dimensions and formats. With that in mind, we focused our attention on making a suite of stickers and tape that could be easily applied to the photography and layouts to build instant and impactful compositions.

We kept the colour palette cold in feel, but paired it with an iridescent, metallic flair to keep it bold and modern. Using a mixture of illustrative styles, we wanted to add variation to the suite of stickers and help them stand out against one another, whilst also trying to maintain a sense of familiarity across them.

This is owning it season

The fully integrated campaign went live on Sports Direct’s socials and in-store. The concept was so successful that we were tasked with creating further on demand content for partner brands, in one of Sports Direct’s biggest winter campaigns. 

The creative platform was rolled out for a second winter in 2022, demonstrating its proven ability to motivate people everywhere to show those excuses who’s really in charge.