McCann Worldgroup’s 22,000 staffers to ‘Walk the Walk’ for UN World Health Day tomorrow April 7

Tomorrow – Thursday, 7th April – McCann Worldgroup staff, friends, families and clients from all over the world will collaborate to ‘Walk the Walk’ on behalf of the UN World Health Organization’s annual World Health Day to demonstrate the importance of exercising for good health.

Conceived and organized by McCann Healthcare Worldwide on behalf of all of its 22,000 worldwide colleagues at McCann Worldgroup, these multiple walks and other forms of physical exercise on April 7 hope to achieve one of the largest concurrent global walks to date, equating to McCann Worldgroup having circumnavigated the world, a total of 42,000 km.

In keeping with McCann Worldgroup’s expertise in the digital space, group walkers registered their involvement with a specially designed website and then ‘tweeted’ or logged their progress as they went – plus posting photos and videos on a Facebook event page — turning an outdoor event into a real-time, social media experience.

Says Nick Brien, chairman & CEO of McCann Worldgroup: “The leaders of McCann Healthcare Worldwide – particularly CEO John Cahill, Global ECD Jeremy Perrott (left), and Amar Urhekar in Asia Pacific – have been brilliant in getting their people in many offices to exercise on World Health Day for the past two years. So I am delighted by McCann Healthcare’s great leadership, and honored by their invitation to collaborate with them this April 7th.  By walking the walk ourselves, we are fostering wellness, getting healthier, and helping to illustrate the importance of an active lifestyle.”  

Adds John Cahill, CEO of McCann Healthcare Worldwide: “Every day, we strive to help our healthcare clients reach professionals, patients and at-risk people with campaigns that improve health and often save lives.  On World Heath Day, we celebrate the World Health Organization’s great mission by making sure we instill and promote these healthy values amongst our staff, colleagues, families and friends and clients.”

To track the global participation of those involved, a specially designed website was set up by McCann Healthcare for each of the participating McCann Worldgroup offices to registered. Then, once walking, through use of social media channels such as Twitter and logyourrun.com their progress was mapped in real-time, allowing all of those participating to see for themselves that they were part of something bigger.

Says Amar Urhekar, president of McCann Healthcare Worldwide Japan and EVP Asia Pacific: “Technology is often maligned for being one of the causes for a rise in inactivity. But technology can also hold the key to reversing this trend.  In our case we have used technology to bring everyone together to get active. By using a special site and an exercise app, we were able to log the activity of all of our people worldwide, tracking how many kilometers were being walked and when. This is a great example of the power of technology and how, when it is used in smart and creative ways, we can reach more people in better ways, resulting in action and awareness.”