Walking Wins

A mass-media campaign inspiring people to move more with a simple but important message.

Background and rationale

Heart Foundation’s national Walking Wins mass media campaign aimed to raise awareness of the benefits of physical activity and inspire action through walking – an accessible and simple way to gain those benefits no matter your starting physical activity level. This campaign also encouraged people to take the path to be active for better heart health by joining the free, national Heart Foundation Walking program.

The campaign concept was developed in 2023 in collaboration with a creative agency and defined following market research, including target-audience focus groups and interviews. While the campaign had broad appeal, Heart Foundation identified and targeted individuals in the community via geotarget social media campaigns who are more likely to join Heart Foundation Walking, as a supportive way to increase their physical activity levels.

Campaign assets included videos featuring Heart Foundation walkers, audio messaging, website landing page, a range of digital assets and supporter kits to encourage stakeholder contribution to support the campaign reach.

Walking Wins ads were featured on social media (Facebook, Instagram), radio, catch up TV (broadcaster video on demand), YouTube, podcast interviews, online paid search engines and a variety of digital ads.

An initial nine-week campaign (soft-launch) was launched in 2023 to test and identify the most effective, creative, messaging and calls-to-action (wave 1). Learnings from the soft launch ensured a strong, successful subsequent nine-week campaign involving all chosen channels which ran in early 2024 (wave 2). To build on the awareness and message recall, Walking Wins was promoted again in 2025 for seven weeks (wave 3). In 2026 a six-week Walking Wins campaign (wave 4) was rolled out with redefined audience targeting, overlaying multiple data sources which assisted in enabling more efficient reach and improved awareness among priority segments.

Alongside the campaign there was a range of Walking Wins merchandise available for purchase. For those wanting to learn more but not ready to sign up to Heart Foundation Walking, a printable active living planner resource was available for download. People could subscribe to an email journey that provided information that encouraged joining Heart Foundation Walking programs (walking groups or Personal Walking Plans).

Outcomes and impact

The Walking Wins campaign had a total reach of 66.8 million across the three waves, with 11.19 million complete video views, 6 million radio listeners, 3,084 new stories generating more than 26.5 million media impressions. Wave 4 data will be available at the end of 2026.

While registrations to Heart Foundation Walking was not the primary aim for the campaign, 47,007 people signed up to the program and 4,982 people downloaded the printable activity living planner resource throughout the campaign period.

Building on the success of each burst of the campaign, we reviewed and worked on optimising advertising performance by identifying and expanding top performing creative assets and messaging to improve outcomes year on year.

The campaign was also a finalist in the category of ‘Best Public Health Initiative’ in the 2024 Prime Awards (healthcare communications award).

Investment and funding

The Walking Wins campaign was part of the National Walking Initiative project funded through the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

• Wave 1 & 2 inclusive of concept development and campaign delivery: $982,000.
• Wave 3 campaign delivery: $200,000.
• Wave 4 campaign delivery: $385,000

Enablers and lessons learned

Enablers leveraged in the success of the campaign included:

• conducting the market research with relevant audiences and engaging a campaign specialist to develop concepts to be tested.
• the campaign was able to be adjusted to the available budget – using the most effective channels matched to budget available.
• engaging the existing Heart Foundation Walking community of over 100,000 people and organisations who helped spread the message through their networks.

Lessons learned throughout the campaign included:

• the importance of focusing the campaign on awareness rather than both awareness and acquisition which have different approaches including where to use financial resources.
• enabled Heart Foundation Walking and Marketing teams to identify the most effective assets and messages to use in future waves and inform all future promotion of Heart Foundation Walking.
• the value in targeting a hero audience who are most likely to engage, to deliver a successful and cost-effective campaign whilst ensuring there is a secondary focus on audiences who are less likely to participant in Heart Foundation Walking.