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Health Benefits
By:
Audrey Sellers
, Associate Editor
Issue:
February 2010
American Express turned to fitness-themed promotional products to motivate workers to lead healthier lives.
How does one tackle a fitness campaign targeting more than 20,000 people? Have a rock-solid call-to-action, says Melissa Moritz of Englewood, New Jersey-based distributor Progressive Promotions, Inc. (UPIC: PPIPROMO). She led the creative charge for American Express when the financial services giant rolled out its HealthyLiving program to employees and their families.
Her first step was to determine which promotional products would get staffers moving—she didn’t want items that employees would stuff in a desk drawer and never use again. The items needed to “build brand awareness, engage employees to sign up, utilize resources and educate on the value and benefit of healthy living,” Moritz says.
She rounded up a series of products that recipients could take straight to the gym: water bottles, pedometers, journals, cooler bags, bike helmets, tote bags and awareness bracelets. The campaign kicked off at different locations at varying times, beginning with offices in New York, Phoenix, India and Spain.
Three weeks before the launch, each location received logoed t-shirts, creating excitement among management and staff. Stress balls and notebooks went out the next week, helping communicate the details of the HealthyLiving program. It was at the official launch that workers received the biggest batch of fitness products, all directly related to achieving health goals.
“The branded promotional products created an exciting flow throughout employees. They felt unified in the globalization of healthier living. Healthy living education along with promotional products drove home the message and drove people to action,” says Moritz. “Absenteeism was reduced as a result of better health which led to increased productivity and a reduction in healthcare costs.”
The client was pleased with the program’s effectiveness and attributes its success to the products chosen. “With the use of promotional products, we have already begun to achieve results,” says Maritza Mora of American Express.
Above: A series of health-related promotional products helped American Express kick off a global fitness program.
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