Push Play

New Zealand's national media-led physical activity campaign, started by the Hillary Commission (later SPARC, Sport and Recreation New Zealand) around 1999, promoting 30 minutes of moderate daily activity as fun, easy and part of community life, with supporting community events and primary care programmes.

Years: 1999
Country: New Zealand
Topic: Physical activity
Asks people to: Start
Strategy: Brand symbol Multi level community Simple instruction
Channel: Clinical setting Events TV
Audience: Adults

Evidence

ObservationalMixed

Annual cross-sectional surveys 1999-2002: awareness of the message rose from 30% to 57% and logo recognition from 14% to 52%; adults intending to be more active rose from 1.8% to 9.4%. Adults active 5+ days a week went from 38.6% (1999) to 44.5% (2000) and back to 38.0% (2002); only the 1999-2000 change was significant (+5.8%, 95% CI 0.1-11.6). No sustained change in activity (Bauman et al. 2003).

Sponsor (who paid)

Hillary Commission (later SPARC, Sport and Recreation New Zealand) Foreign government, creator and funder

Credits (who made it)

Not recorded yet.

Related campaigns

Find Thirty every day 2002–2010
ParticipACTION 1971–now

Sources

Bauman A et al. Evaluation of the national 'Push Play' campaign in New Zealand: creating population awareness of physical activity. N Z Med J 2003;116(1179):U535 evaluation · 2003 · PMID 14513082

Research notes

Only source opened is the PubMed abstract. startYear 1999 inferred from the first evaluation survey; exact launch date not confirmed. Te Ara (403, not read) has a 2008 Push Play ad aimed at Pacific communities per a search snippet, implying the campaign ran into the 2000s under SPARC; endYear left out. 'tv' inferred from 'media-led'; verify. brand-symbol tagged for the Push Play logo tracked in the evaluation.

Record cases/nz-push-play.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign