Anytime Fitness Comedy Sets

How do you leverage DCO and YouTube to gain a new gym member every 4 minutes?

Background

In 2021, Australia’s lockdowns had taken a heavy toll on the gym industry. With many gym locations shut, people were forced into new online fitness routines. Despite Anytime Fitness being the nation’s biggest health club chain, data showed us that search interest for the brand had hit a 3-year low and was fast becoming irrelevant. So, to help rebuild Anytime Fitness as the country emerged from lockdown, we needed to intercept customers online with hyper-relevant content to drive them back into the gym.

In the week leading up to their annual membership sale, our job was to inspire Australians to join the gym after lockdown and drive new member acquisition.

Journey

Our approach was a dynamic pre-roll campaign on the very platform where people were spending their time-consuming content – YouTube. Instead of blasting our audience with the standard pre-roll they were likely to skip, we used data to serve them the type of entertainment they were looking for. By tracking and targeting people’s interests and search terms, we were able to intercept them with contextual content that was designed to get the gym back on their minds.

The campaign reimagined traditional fitness advertising by bringing an Australian standup comedian into the gym world to tell targeted jokes instead of retail messages. Why jokes? Because we knew our content-loving audience was hungry for entertainment.

Using Google’s advanced Director Mix technology, over 100 unique ads were dynamically composited into pre-roll videos to create customisation – and laughs – at scale. By making viewers giggle, we made the gym seem less intimidating after months of lockdown and inspired a new wave of gym-goers to give it a go.

Outcomes

Our campaign outperformed objectives – successfully creating awareness and positive sentiment for Anytime Fitness. And most importantly, it drove new members into the gym in only a week’s time, with one new member joining the gym every 4 minutes. In just 7 days, we successfully reversed the 3-year decline in search interest for Anytime Fitness (and made gym ads 100% more fun).