Gamification for charities: The Great British Walking Challenge

17. And c reat i ng bet t er s t reet s “ I t wa s gr e a t t o ha ve a n i nc e nt i ve t o ge t out mor e … di s c ove r i ng a whol e ne w wor l d of c hi mne y pot s , a nd pa ve me nt c a f e s , s t r e e t s i gns … nd hol e s a i n t he r oa d ( I happi l y l obbi ed m l oc al M and y P M on behal f of Li vi ng SP St reet s ’ c am gn t o pai im prove pavem s – a ndent got e nc our a gi ng r e pl i e s ) . ” Blogger at walkingheads.net

18. So how di d w do? e

19. Exercise How could your organisation use gamification?

20. Thanks for taking part! rosanna.downes@livingstreets.org.uk @rosannadownes @livingstreets

Editor's Notes

So what did we do to mobilize Britain? We challenged the country. As part of National Walking Month, our annual celebration of walking in May, we put on the Great British Walking Challenge and invited the country to see how many times we could collectively walk between Land’s End and John O’Groats.
We relaunched our website in advance of the event, introducing new interactive tools to allow people to log their walks, set up workplace or campaigning groups, and interact with others. The site’s since been shortlisted for two awards.
On the site, you can log your walks through inputting the miles, minutes or steps you’ve covered, and see how many calories you’ve burnt off, how much CO2 you’ve saved, and how your stats stack up compared to colleagues, friends, or others in your area, and take challenges to earn points. We introduced a walkthrough to the site to help people take part.
It’s free to sign up and take part. Just visit livingstreets.org.uk, click the ‘sign up’ button, and you can quickly and easily create your account. Once you’ve signed up, you’re taken to your personal dashboard, where you can see your walking totals, any campaign actions you’ve taken, and what’s happening in your area.
It’s also designed so workplaces can take part, to promote walking in the workplace. You can find your workplace with the easy-to-use search function, then join up. Any miles you log will also be displayed in your workplace’s totals, so you can see how you’re doing compared to your colleagues. Workplace administrators can also create specific groups for teams or branches.
Logging your walk is simple – choose whether to add minutes, steps or miles, your pace – from slow, medium or fast – and your reason for walking; for example, to or from walk. The site then automatically calculates how many calories you’ve burnt, miles you’ve covered and CO2 you’ve saved, translated into fun, accessible icons – how many muffins you’ve burnt, for example.
You can see lifetime totals for yourself, your workplace, or your area. We’ve found encouraging friendly competition is a great way to get people walking. Lots of workplaces who’ve signed up have bought resources from us, such as t shirts or pedometers, which they offer as prizes for their top walking employees.
To further encourage competition, the site features a range of challenges which users can participate in to accrue extra points – for example, uploading photos from their walk. They can also share their photos or comments through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
We also offer bespoke challenges for workplaces or local authorities, which can include their own branding and totalisers, and other bespoke options such as the opportunity to record other modes of transport – cycling, for example.
We also work in partnership with businesses in a range of other ways – for example, the Cooperative, sponsors of Walk to Work Week, promoted the challenge on till screens across the UK and on their in store radio. We created a Co-operative challenge which all site users could participate in, which proved to be hugely popular.
To spread the word about the challenge and get as many people involved as possible, our CEO Tony Armstrong and Strider, the Living Streets Walk to School campaign mascot, visited every London borough. We invited people to tweet photos of Strider with the hashtag #spotstrider, and entered participants into a prize draw.
We also received unprecedented media coverage, including in Sainsbury’s Magazine, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Huffington Post, the Evening Standard and Radio 4. That’s an estimated reach of 33 million people!
We also saw unprecedented social media activity and digital promotion generally, with participants sharing their photos and comments on twitter and Facebook, workplaces using our Great British Walking Challenge email templates, and website owners promoted the event with Great British Walking Challenge button and banner adverts.
And we made sure the message around creating better streets wasn’t lost, by getting thousands of people involved with our campaigns for safer, more attractive and enjoyable streets.
So how did we do? Well, we collectively logged 128,271 miles – that’s 146.76 times between Land’s End and John O’Groats. Workplaces logged 70,000 miles during Walk to Work Week alone! We’ll be surveying people over the next year to make sure they’re keeping up the walking habit.

Gamification for charities: The Great British Walking Challenge

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Editor's Notes