Earth Day Canada is playing with gym culture idioms and memes, urging event participants to enjoy “leg day,” while skipping cars rather than carbs.
The campaign, created for the Montreal-based non-profit by Sid Lee, features a bulked up, animated character with skinny legs. It’s all about promoting an active lifestyle, and inspiring Canadians to opt for active and public transport solutions beyond Earth Day, which occurs on April 22.
“We turned the ‘skipped leg day’ meme into Earth Man with our amazing animation partner, Gimmick Studio,” says Jennifer Stack, head of content at Sid Lee. “With sweet muscles and planet tattoos, our motivational gym-bro comes to life to spread the word [that] anything counts as leg day.”
Stack explains that combining real footage with animation creates a visually arresting combo that makes people look at the world differently.
“We’re grounded in reality, but sometimes, it takes an anthropomorphized planet to encourage you to actually take action,” she says.
Until April 22, Canadians embracing sustainable transportation methods such as biking, walking, running, using public transit, or carpooling are invited to register at the associated “Leg Day” microsite for a chance to win prizes.
Within a week, the challenge has gained around 32,000 participants across North America, and is being supported by prizes from the Toronto Transit Commission, BIXI Montreal, Bike Share TO and iGO Electric Bikes. MOBI Bike Share even announced free bike share in Vancouver for the month of April, in support of the initiative.
As Stack tells strategy, the campaign’s goal is to reach Canadians at large and the shop is doing so in a two-pronged approach to drive awareness of the “Earth Day is Leg Day” initiative, and empower early adopters to recruit their friends, families and co-workers to join the challenge.
Accessible on digital platforms, radio, and TV, “Earth Day is Leg Day” participants can also opt into the challenge through the Strava app, further amplifying the campaign’s reach.
“Selecting Strava as the primary social channel for the ‘Earth Day is Leg Day’ challenge unlocked a lot of synergy for this campaign in ways the top social networks today can not compete,” Stack says. “Strava enabled a clear participation mechanism for people, a data collection infrastructure to track program impact and direct access to passionate communities primed to create content around this initiative.”
Strava gives Earth Day Canada real data on how many greenhouse gas emissions we collectively reduce, Stack explains.
The campaign is informed by new Ipsos survey on the transportation habits of Canadians, revealing that while 54% of employed Canadians drive to work, there’s a strong inclination towards
eco-friendlier commuting methods. Also, 66% of respondents would like to use a greener way to commute.
Sid Lee has collaborated with Earth Day Canada for the past 15 years. Online media was handled in-house by Sid Lee’s content team, wild postings in Toronto were donated by Grassroots and remaining media was secured directly by Earth Day Canada.
