South Africa has one of the highest incidences of mental health issues of any country in the world.
Establishing that it is a proven fact that running has an immensely positive effect on mental wellbeing, we asked: could we use our sponsorship of the Nedbank Running Club as a platform to get South Africa running to address this major societal issue, and ‘Runify’ around our next major epidemic – the mental health crisis?
Runified for Mental Health saw Nedbank partner with SADAG to facilitate mental health support groups centred around running.
Throughout a two-month period we utilised the Nedbank Running Club on Strava to make these support group runs available every day to anyone needing an outlet.
Influencers with an active presence in running and known for promoting mental health hosted our daily support group runs and publicised our efforts and geotargeted ad units promoted area specific support group runs.
The runs were all 5km – ensuring they were accessible to any runner.
They also served as a research platform; with those participating incentivised to share how their involvement in the groups affected their mental health over the period.
The results of this survey formed the first SADAG ratified study proving running’s benefit to mental wellbeing – becoming a major story for news media during mental health month.
85k engagements with influencer content
+2.6K survey completions proved running for mental health’s efficacy
