the situation
Health screenings at a major industrial site in Brazil surfaced a clear pattern, especially among men ages 30–50: sedentary habits, hypertension, elevated glucose, cardiac risk, and abdominal obesity. The brief wasn’t to “raise awareness.” It was to move the numbers by changing everyday behavior.
the IDEA
Instead of trying to persuade people into healthier habits, design a system that makes healthy choices easier to start and harder to drop. For this audience, the strongest lever wasn’t more health and wellness information. It was competition and camaraderie. If we could make health visible, social, and trackable, participation would follow.
the solution
A Mixed-Martial-Arts-inspired wellness league built around teams, points, and progress. Employees joined “fighter teams,” earned points for specific actions (movement, nutrition, follow-ups), and tracked performance through a leaderboard. Occupational health, nutrition, and fitness professionals anchored the rules so the challenge stayed safe, credible, and tied to real risk factors.
Here’s what we launched:
- A branded challenge system: simple rules, clear scoring, strong visual identity
- Team-based squads: weekly and monthly missions tied to the key risk indicators we needed to improve
- Incentives were designed to spread the habit: solo activity counted, but group activity counted more. Individual workouts earned points, activity with friends/family doubled points, and bringing coworkers in could earn the highest score. Nutrition-plan adherence earned points too.
- A leaderboard cadence: public rankings to sustain momentum and friendly rivalry
- WhatsApp-first engagement: proof-sharing, encouragement, accountability, and social reinforcement in the flow of life
- Professional guardrails: periodic check-ins and guidance from health, nutrition, and fitness teams
- A scalable model: designed to be repeatable across sites without losing the “game”
what i did
- Led the end-to-end communications and engagement strategy, from insight to concept through rollout and results storytelling
- Built the campaign narrative, participation mechanics, rules, and content cadence so it stayed simple, fair, and repeatable
- Partnered with occupational health, nutrition, and HSE to align activities to risk reduction and protect program credibility
- Designed the channel strategy and community rituals (WhatsApp groups, sharing prompts, leaderboard moments) to drive peer reinforcement
- Supported leadership visibility and sponsor messaging to sustain participation and enable expansion to new regions
why it mattered
Most wellness programs fail because they stay private and optional. This one worked because it changed the social environment: health became something teams did together, tracked together, and celebrated together. That shift created consistency, and consistency produced outcomes.
Year 1:
- 95 participants joined the program across 10 teams
- Health and quality-of-life indicators improved across all tracked measures (blood pressure, glucose, cardiac risk, abdominal fat), validated by occupational health professionals.
- Clear culture shift: wellness became something people talked about, shared, and competed on.
- Renewed for a second (and then for a third) edition based on performance.
Year 2:
- Participation increased 17% vs. the prior year (110 participants across 22 teams).
- 100 lbs of body fat reduced (aggregate).
- 115,000 miles walked and 3,600 miles swum (aggregate).
- 15% of participants moved out of the cardiac-risk group (per occupational health tracking).
Year 3:
- Expanded across additional industrial sites and regions.
- Participation increased 35% vs. the prior year (230 participants across 46 teams).
- 15,730 hours of physical activity logged over 210 days (about 30+ minutes/day per participant, on average).
- Each participant exercised with at least three friends or family members, extending the impact beyond the workplace.
Cinthia Blanchard 
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