What does a brand with attitude look like?

After spreading myself thin for a short time in the advertising agency world, my role as Senior Designer at Jetts Australia has been to deep dive into the minutiae of branding. Over the last 5 years, my mission has been to create flexible and efficient creative strategies that achieve visual consistency for an Aussie fitness industry pioneer that was beginning to feel its age.

Here is one question that came to mind: what is the difference between day-to-day consistency and brand insanity? Jetts cut its teeth in the mid-late 2000’s as the first in Australia to offer affordable self-service 24/7 gym access and no lock-in contracts. But like most brands, it’s been guilty of repeating the same marketing tactics without much purposeful innovation. This is fairly indicative of the fitness industry as a collective — a lot of bum-sniffing makes us boring and predictable. 

It’s almost vomit-inducing how many generic fitness brands promise to ‘get fast results’. Cutting to the chase doesn’t help their cause because as we know, genuine fitness results don’t come easy. Or cheap.

This kind of messaging just doesn’t seem to resonate.

Edward De Bono wrote “it is disturbing to think how many situations are incompletely understood because attempts at explanation persist in using well-tried familiar patterns which ought themselves to be re-examined.” Branding and marketing is not a one-way street. In a zeitgeist when the economic system itself is in question, something crucial has been missing from the mix: the attitude of the consumer. 

Great brands visually (and experientially) capture this attitude and reflect it. Emotion, focus, authenticity, wearing your heart on your sleeve. It’s what every serious brand says they’re all about, but few execute it consistently.

Zooming in, It looks like the deep intake of breath before launching back into another round of HIIT, it’s the spontaneous fist bump from one member to another, it’s when a contorted, painful grimace morphs into a smile, it’s the rocking of a treadmill as someone sprints for the finish. It’s the gag you make when you’ve left your protein shaker on the bench too long, it smells like chicken & broccoli for the fourth night in a row… I could go on!

This attitude looks and feels and smells like hard work, persistence and tenacity to do better.

In the quest to conquer more eyes and hearts, we have moved the Jetts brand visual language a long way since the last visual update in 2015, and you can see the evolution from even earlier. Like most brands, we rely on stock imagery for branded campaign collateral, however we have become far more judicious about the type of story we want to tell with the images we choose. We’ve pushed the tempo, dialled up the saturation and turned up the attitude: one beautiful, painful grimace at a time!

Not to get too symbolic, but collage is not just a useful visual communication tool, but it's a metaphor for life: it’s a mixtape with a bit of everything. 

Visually speaking, the collage technique allows for infinite variation of themes and colours. It captures the moments we have been discussing from different angles. The modular grid system is flexible enough to design around any composition, with tight cropping and the ability to create tonally-similar montages. To service the needs of a 250+ gym franchise network, our in-house creative team churn through a lot of creative output, so the system is designed to be simple enough for anyone to follow, regardless of format.

Workout On Your Terms is a positioning line that is about going back to basics: the gym about connecting the gym to your lifestyle, and the way you view your body—you are training for your life. On a serious note, some people will do whatever it takes to redeem themselves. In desperate attempts to lose weight or look good naked, they’ll try anything, no matter how obviously ridiculous the gimmick or potentially dangerous shortcut. 

Jetts gives members permission to honestly be themselves; lumps, bumps, rolls, ribs, sweat, tears, tantrums and all. Our updated visual system is our response to quick fixes and fads: take those Cosmo articles with ‘10 exercises you should be doing’ and throw them in the trash. Beyond the obvious amateur entrepreneurialism that motivates anyone with a box to open up a space and call it a gym, or start a YouTube Vlog, popular culture forgets that it takes sweat, tears and cheers, not clout-chasing influencers looking for internet bragging rights. 

All of this has to add up to something: relevance. And relevance is depleted when we (the fitness industry) constantly engage in Cold War marketing tactics in the race to advertise the most competitive joining offer each month.

Now zoom out, and visually, that’s where Jetts finds its place in the world. When a great experience is consistently delivered then a brand promise comes alive with love and passion. Now that's what I call attitude! Not the myopic, infatuated, debt-inducing parochial love that many consumer brands mistake for loyalty.