'#JumpForHealth urged people to prioritise their health while helping someone walk again'

Aditya Birla Health Insurance Company Ltd. (ABHICL), the Health Insurance subsidiary of Aditya Birla Capital Limited, a significant non-banking financial services company, has launched the fourth edition of its #JumpForHealth campaign. #JumpForHealth is a movement, created by ABHICL, to get people to start their health journey through the power of jumping, while simultaneously contributing towards helping the differently-abled walk again. With the combined efforts of the participating individuals, for every 10,000 jumps collected, ABHICL is donating 1 prosthetic leg to the underprivileged.

In its last three chapters, JumpForHealth has empowered and motivated families to get started on their fitness journey by participating in this campaign. The campaign has witnessed tremendous involvement and impact during its past 3 editions as nearly 19 million jumps were received.

Ajay Kakar, Chief Marketing Officer, Aditya Birla Capital shared insights, during an interaction with e4m, around the campaign’s mission to provoke people to self-realise the importance of staying healthy and the spirit of giving.

What is the aim of the #JumpForHealth campaign?

At Aditya Birla Health Insurance, we are committed to donating one prosthetic leg for every 10,000 jumps that we can encourage people to do. The aim is to encourage people to keep healthy and to also have them help a person earn a prosthetic leg, at the same time.

At Aditya Birla Capital, we believe in provoking people to self-realize the importance of their ‘health’.  Thus the focus of Aditya Birla Health Insurance has always been on “Health First”, which means encouraging people to prioritize their health. 

In 2017, we came across the insight that according to the American Journal of Health, jumping 10 times, twice a day is good for your bones. We wanted to create a movement with this campaign wherein individuals from all walks of life are able to lead healthy and fulfilling life. This insight coupled with a social commitment led to the birth of #JumpForHealth.  

With this in mind, we started out to create a unique proposition for #JumpForHealth on World Health Day (7th April 2017).  The power of jumping is not limited to taking care of your own health but it is also about empowering someone in need.

 What was your creative brief to your agency? What was the impact?

The initial agency brief was a question - how do we excite somebody to jump for themselves and simultaneously do good for others. 

In our launch year, 2017, the #JumpForHealth initiative went viral. This validated our belief that people are taking steps to lead a healthy lifestyle and contribute to the social cause. Celebrities such as Sanjay Dutt, Ricky Ponting and Prasoon Joshi joined our movement and jumped for the cause. We received tremendous responses from India and around the world. 1 million jumps were reached in just 5 days & 2 million in the next 3 weeks; the initiative reached 6.1 million users online. We donated 200 prosthetic legs. Every year the agency brief has been kept alive and topical.

In 2018, our brief was that every individual should inculcate the healthy habit of jumping, by taking it to every corner of India and make it a multi-channel movement. The campaign became bigger as we introduced a signature music track, a 21-day exercise routine and a national radio campaign. Diverse groups from different walks of life such as women groups, Mumbai’s Dabbawallas and celebrities such as Jonty Rhodes, Bani J, PulkitSamrat participated. This led to a collection of 5.7 million jumps and the donation of 572 prosthetic legs.

As we witnessed encouraging responses in 2017 and 2018, in 2019 the brief was to make this viral challenge into a worldwide movement. So, a signature music track and a special ‘JUMP’ choreographed by Bollywood dance master – Remo D’Souza was created.

We received jumps from Indonesia, Turkey, the USA and UK. People from yoga &zumba centres across India, kids and toddlers, fitness enthusiasts, dance groups, mothers, jump ropers on ice, and others joined the movement. Our engagement grew by 50% as compared to the previous year. #JumpForHealth now became a movement with celebrities like Remo, MilindSoman and Kimberly Shah creating a unique jump + dance exercise routine. With 11 million jumps we could donate 1100 prosthetic legs.

 With the pandemic on our back, we recognised how individuals are going through this difficult phase, emotionally and physically. The news of Covid vaccinations gave ‘Ray of Hope’ to each one of us. We wanted to express our understanding and compassion towards the ongoing situation.

So, our brief was to dedicate 2021 #JumpForHealth campaign to all the Covid warriors - right from health workers, grocery shop owners, covid survivors, government workers, police staff etc. and take inspiration from them to help someone walk again and enlighten the hero in us to do so.

 Thus, #JumpforHealth 2021 was inspired by the spirit of the Covid-19 warriors such as the doctors, nurses, delivery boys, maids etc. who jumped in so that we could bounce back.

As a result of this, Sudha Chandran (who has herself lost a leg and still emerged as a true winner in her life as a dancer) led the initiative to present a beautiful tribute to the Covid warriors & appeal to others to donate their jumps to the cause to stay healthy themselves + help someone walk again. We saw huge participation from doctors, nurses, pharmacists, police, Covid survivors, bank employees, NGOs, civil defence staff, food store staff across all our digital platforms. This campaign was not limited to India but witnessed participation from the Philippines, Canada, USA, France and Singapore. This year we achieved over 5 million jumps through the digital platforms. 

Are there any digital amplification plans?

Due to the lockdown, we encouraged more participants to join us this year across all digital platforms available to us. The campaign was amplified via a microsite and through all our social media platforms i.e. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

This year, for the first time, we introduced the Jump-o-Meter wherein the jumps can be counted real-time on a device. On Instagram, respective influencers challenged each other and asked their followers to join in. On Facebook, participants could use the customized JFH frame mentioning them as ‘Proud #JUmpForHealth’ participant’. On Instagram, influencers embraced #JumpForHealth message in their bios.

What marketing mediums will be used and how did you track the effectiveness of the campaign?

We have managed to excite and inspire people across ages, professions and geographies. This has become a viral phenomenon. Word of Mouth has played a key role to spread our message across the globe. #JumpForHealth also reached participants through Radio and digital channels (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter).

We measure our success by the actual jumps and the contributions of prosthetic legs we have done over the years. This level of engagement is more exciting to us as a brand

What was the insight you wanted to tap?

There are two sides to any human being. Firstly, every individual wants to do things for himself in a world where health has become very important. Secondly, a human being is willing to go an extra mile for somebody because there is a charitable heart in all of us. When you bring these two thoughts together you can move mountains. The present generation’s lifestyle is highly sedentary in nature.

This paves the path for suffering from numerous lifestyle diseases. Through the #JumpForHealth campaign, we want to tap into the significance of living an active life by considering exercise a part of one’s daily routine. We hope to build an active generation who focuses on their health and the social cause attached to this campaign brings out the best in all.

What kind of challenges did you face between the idea and execution of the campaign?

In these challenging and stressful times, all are physically and mentally strained, more so given the lockdown. We were unsure of how would a lockdown mind react to #JumpForHealth campaign. More so, since the #JumpForHealth campaign, since inception, has been executed on-ground and more so in the outdoors. But this year, we adhered to the lockdown guidelines. The entire team had to think through how will we reposition #JumpForHealth campaign on the digital platform.  This was our first experience executing an end to end digital campaign, enriched with new learnings and experience.