Who: GoodLife Fitness with Gut Toronto for creative, strategy and production; Finn O’Hara for direction and photography; and ROR Partners inc for media. (The brand partnered with the media agency in October because of its specialization in the fitness industry.)
What: “There’s always a reason,” a campaign that steps away from the New Year’s resolution theme that is common in the fitness space during January, to focus on the everyday benefits that members experience.
What: “There’s always a reason,” a campaign that steps away from the New Year’s resolution theme that is common in the fitness space during January, to focus on the everyday benefits that members experience.
When & Where: The campaign launched on Jan. 1 and will run for several months, including video, OOH, digital and organic social.
Why: GoodLife aims to create a more authentic brand relationship with its clientele by avoiding the discourse of new year’s resolutions, instead pulling from member research to show the real reasons that people are motivated to go to the gym.
“Typically in January, people are talking about ‘a new fitter you’ and we didn't want to focus on those traditional messages,” GoodLife’s VP of marketing, partnerships and external relations, Tammy Brazier, told The Message. “Fitness is something that stays with you throughout the year so focusing on something that made up both a personal and emotional connection for people, we felt would resonate a little more.”
How (the strategy): GoodLife conducts research through member surveys a few times a year. For this campaign, survey results from the last 24 months were used to determine the most relevant insights. Questions include what amenities members are using the most, and what motivates them to go to the gym.
“The research that we've been doing in the last few years really indicates that positive mental health continues to be one of the top two reasons that people are looking for exercise and movement,” said Brazier. “We felt that we had a unique opportunity to build on that connection between movement and positive mental health, which is something that we sometimes don't draw enough attention to.”
How (the creative): Cultivating an authentic brand comes from focusing on the "hero" (the members) and not the club itself, said Brazier. The campaign was shot at the GoodLife Fitness Oakville Place club but is intended to look like any of GoodLife’s 200+ clubs across Canada, so as to imply that GoodLife is just the background for the hero’s story. The heroes in question are several real GoodLife members and employees.
They're shown participating in real GoodLife fitness experiences while their motivations are explained with supers.
The OOH ads, for instance, use location-specific lines, such as an ad outside of a shopping plaza about being able to carry all your grocery bags in one trip, or an ad in the downtown core that encourages office workers to use fitness to outrun their inner critic.
In the video, the narrator describes a woman lunging away memories of her ex, and a man lifting weights so that he can carry his aging, 100 lb dog up the stairs.
“It goes as far as wanting to connect our members to where they are right now, and we know that fitness helps them take care of their mental health, they want to feel good every day, and they value the social connection that's in our clubs,” said Brazier. “So it was really important for us to resonate that every reason is the right reason to come if it makes you feel good.”
The scenes are carefully styled with little details like dog fur stuck to gym clothes, and markers drawn on the skin of parents by their children, to further evoke the authentic experiences of GoodLife Fitness members.
Award-winning director and photographer Finn O’Hara, known for his work with Nike, Adidas, and Coca Cola, was the perfect person to bring the concepts to life, said Brazier.
“We wanted to celebrate our members and employees as the heroes that they are, and he was a natural fit for that.”
The campaign also sprinkles in the health club’s staple shade of red so that the brand identity is present without taking attention away from the members.
GoodLife also plans to capture a series of video "streeters" with people candidly sharing their reasons for going to the gym, which will be shared via GoodLife’s Instagram Reels and on TikTok along with member posts, answering common fitness questions and spotlighting personal motivations.
