Fat Kid Got Fit by Bll Baron I & Damon DiMarco

Author:Bll Baron I & Damon DiMarco
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762776207
Publisher: Lyons Press

Fit Tip #9: If It Isn’t Fun, You’ll Fail

Thumbs up-to the Volkswagen company for what I’m about to write. That’s right, I said Volkswagen, the ubiquitous German car company. Their Beetles and Jettas and snub-nosed vans have all played a very strong part in American culture over the past several decades. So what does Volkswagen have to do with getting fit? Hang on for a second, I’ll tell you.

A few years back, Volkswagen launched an ingenious advertising campaign for their new line of Blue Motion cars—cars whose operations served to reduce the environmental impact so often generated by automobiles. The marketing staff at Volkswagen knew that a popular misconception existed among consumers that you had to sacrifice performance when you purchased a car that was engineered to be environmentally friendly. So the marketers chose to steer their campaign in a totally new direction. They made the case that driving these new Blue Motion cars was not only good for greening the environment, it was also a lot of fun!

Fun was the difference. Fun was the key. Fun, the marketers said, is important. Fun initiates new behaviors. For instance, when we find ourselves doing something fun, we want to keep on doing it, right? Hours go by like minutes. Days whip by like hours. We find ourselves getting up in the morning, ready to go to work. We talk to our friends about how we’re having so much fun and invite them to get in the game, as well. Fun can motivate. Fun can change. Fun helps buoy our spirits.

Volkswagen set out to prove that having fun can serve as a catalyst to change people’s behavior. Having fun, when properly structured, can help us choose the right thing to do—and not just for ourselves, but for society at large. They called this theory (oddly enough) the Fun Theory. But before they could use it, they had to prove it. So they tested it using a series of simple but ingenious experiments.

The first experiment involved a busy subway station in Odenplan, Sweden. In this station, commuters who had disembarked from their subway cars faced a choice as to how they would reach street level. Would they take the flight of stairs, or would they take an escalator that ran right next to the flight of stairs? Taking stairs can be good for you, as we’ve already discussed. But the researchers set up some cameras and studied the patterns of foot traffic for a while. Do you know what they discovered? That’s right. A lot of people were taking the escalator, which led to this question: How could the researchers change people’s behavior and get them to take the stairs instead?

Enter the Fun Theory. One night, while the subway station was closed, a team went in and doctored the steps of the staircase to look like a giant piano. There were long white keys and smaller black keys, just like you’d see on a keyboard. Then the team rigged up a series of

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