Why Gyms Are Turning To Creativity To Increase Sales

This month in January I noticed a lot of new creative campaigns from different gyms. When I went to do my first workout of the year I saw that Gymbox had a creative poster outside the entrance, which said:?“You can’t cheat on your gym-which is lucky given your track record.” I liked it — I took a picture and posted it on social media with a spin.

Then I started noticing more adverts from them on social media and OOH (out-of-home) advertising.

Days later I stumbled across an article on?The Drum?that shared all the creative campaigns gyms run in January and I was impressed.

The fitness industry is finally using creativity to tackle some problems we see in society and obviously they want to stand out from the marketplace. But the question is: If everyone is doing the same thing, do you stand out?

There is hard evidence that people are interested in joining a gym and becoming healthier every January, but by the first week of February the majority of people are back with their old habits — eating a pizza and being at the pub by 18:00.

If we look at the Google Trends graph (from 2004) you can see how January is at the peak.

So if there is a trend and a surge in inquiries and new memberships it means there is demand and there is a market for it.

So rather than just promoting the product and the price a lot of premium gyms decided to use creativity to stand out.

Another brand that went all in with a creative campaign is the luxury fitness company Equinox. It decided to invest in out-of-home media claiming ‘We don’t speak January’ and it banned new sign ups in January.

That’s ‘crazy’, they are basically saying NO to new sales. They are claiming that they want to promote long-term commitment.

Gymshark, an apparel company, ran a new campaign encouraging people to ‘Dream Small’. Because most New Year resolutions fail, they decided to ask customers to dream small, run less, lift less but whatever they decide to do, do it consistently. Which makes sense.

The question becomes how did they come up with these ideas? Well, creative ideas come from?consumer insights.?When we brainstorm ideas and want to communicate to a market — to potential customers — we think from the customer’s perspective. In order to be relatable our advert and content needs to be relevant and the consumer needs to have the ‘aha moment’.

The difference between a campaign communicating price & location vs a creative campaign is tremendous. You can even do a test and see the difference in the response.

Here’s an example from a Pure Gym advert; it’s plain and simple: Brand logo, the product and cost.

There is a tremendous difference between the creative campaigns we saw above and the plain Jenny campaigns.

How do you come up with creative insights? Well, you brainstorm ideas, but the most effective thing we can do is?listen?to the customer. Ideally, have interviews and surveys. They call it market research. The bottom line is we need to have conversations with our clients to understand how they think, how they behave and how they perceive things.

We have to remember that we are not the customer.

Creative campaigns don’t just happen, they are developed with a framework, with a lot of hard work and talented people.

The one thing that we can always add to creativity is purpose. The reason why is because if you truly believe that fitness is a long-term commitment, you communicate that regularly, you create content about it, you create interesting stories (not fabricated).

Your campaigns are based on your brand purpose, you talk about themes your brand story includes. When we merge both; creativity and purpose, that’s when magic happens.

The reason the fitness industry is using creativity to tackle their bottom line is because they saw a huge decline in conversation rates because most fitness adverts and content look the same.

It’s a vicious cycle, create more gym content and try to get people in. Well known studios / franchisees have been posting very similar content for years. I’m genuinely surprised how they are not bored of posting the same?5 reasons why you should join our FUN gym.

More fitness brands need to think more like a media companies, more like a content creators rather than a business.

People like?James Smith?has massive engagement and following (1.1million followers) because he understands the concept of ‘creator’, the concept of adding value. He shares his thoughts on different fitness related things.

I think?1Rebel?and?Gymbox?are doing a great job entertaining us and giving us a glimpse of what is happening behind the scenes and in some cases just make us laugh. There is a difference between a campaign and creating content but the two should have a strategy. Content is something you do consistently throughout the year — campaigns are run based on your brand needs.

Creativity can solve a lot of issues in our society and definitely in the fitness industry. It can inspire us to change, it can inspire people to pursue something bigger than themselves.

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