Strength and balance creative campaign development

Hampshire Perspectives is the County Council's residents' forum

This report summarises key findings from the 46th Hampshire Perspectives survey.

Research was conducted to help select the most appropriate ideas for a campaign that will run from January 2026. Respondents were presented with different scenarios on how strength and balance activities could be embedded into daily routines, highlighting a short-term benefit of each. Your responses were used to select which ones to progress from the six which had been drafted - based on how motivating they are, the perceived ease of exercises, relevance of the scenarios, and clarity / logic of the link between the scenes – and to help optimise the selected ideas.

The survey itself was open between 7 and 21 August 2025, and was completed by 289 Hampshire Perspectives members who were either aged 65 or over themselves and weren’t exercising regularly, or knew someone well who fell into that category.

Key findings were as follows:

Overall campaign idea: 63% of you rated the overall underlying campaign idea as ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ with a further 25% rating it as ‘Fair’.  With careful selection and optimisation of final executions based on the feedback, it has potential to work even more strongly, especially for men and those less likely to be exercising already.

• The key ingredients working well were the exercises themselves (simple, enjoyable, easy to relate to and featuring everyday tasks), coupled with the links to the immediate benefits / goals
• Care is needed to avoid the final executions feeling patronising or contrived.

Of the six potential executions, two were rated well:

• one featuring someone doing knee bends in order to make it easier for them to bend and pick up a ball to throw when playing with their dog
• one showing someone standing on tip-toes and back down again so that they can reach their kitchen shelves to get down items ready to entertain friends at home.
• Three others were identified as having some specific areas of potential even if not working as well overall: the best elements of these were combined to create new scenarios.
• One however was seen as contrived, lacking clear links between the different scenes within it, and was recommended to be dropped.

Survey responses also helped identify principles to improve the ideas, which were applied to the final scripts prior to filming:

• Make it EASY: Important that the exercises are seen as easy and accessible (simple, achievable, daily activities incorporated into daily routines).
• Make it ATTRACTIVE: Critical to dial up the short term rewards in the end-scenes when filming, using a sense of energy to help them feel engaging and motivating.
• Make it RELEVANT: Achieved by featuring daily-routine activities that are appropriate for the target audience, coupled with end-scenes that feel relevant. Featuring things that people are potentially starting to have trouble doing (e.g. kneeling down & getting up again) will further help messages seem relevant.