Fitness brands struggle to find right pitch to keep their flock together

As the business of fitness crumbles over a prolonged lockdown, a once thriving set of brands is struggling to stay in the race

It has not been an easy few months for brands across categories but for fitness labels that have built their identity around an active and outdoorsy life, the period has brought down an existential crisis. Specialty retailers such as Decathlon and a burgeoning set of start-up labels around health and fitness (Curefit, Healthifyme, FitMeIn and others) are staring a period of long and deep hibernation and struggling to find the right tone and pitch to keep their flock together.

Conventional offline sports and fitness retail and centres have been forced to innovate with online engagements and social media activations. And so trending hashtags, sports and fitness challenges and virtual workouts have become the language of engagement for such brands. 

Virtual spin

Fitness brands in keeping with the ongoing trend, have ratcheted up their online presence. However, while retail and clothing labels (and other such) have adopted a tone of solidarity and cheer, fitness brands have sought ways to keep up an image of continuous action, even as everything around them is at a standstill. 

Consider global sports retailer Decathlon. Under lock down, the retail brand’s website is a virtual storefront for yoga classes, exercise and a community building space for people. It launched #PlayItSafe campaign that looked to keep its community of fitness and sports enthusiasts motivated with a series of virtual workouts and followed up with 'Hallympics 2020' initiative. 

“Hallympics was a series of fitness challenges across social media platforms. Our 'home' athletes were given two challenges each day with a three-hour window to complete the challenge and upload their video,” a company spokesperson said. Such challenges help the brand retain its core value of being a purveyor of physical well-being, even when there is no way to deliver on the promise. 

Similarly, Singapore-based Temasek Holdings backed Cure.Fit, a health, fitness and food start-up. The company has laid off several of its staff across the country to stay afloat as its centres remain shuttered, but to keep its brand alive and relevant it has put together a mix of activities for its followers. It has been conducting virtual 

live streamed workout sessions with actors, sportspersons, choreographers and other influencers. 

“Anyone can access these classes on the cure.fit app or website for free. Nearly 75 per cent of our members are engaging with these live classes. This has grown almost 5X from the time after lockdown. However the biggest growth of this product is coming from completely new customers,” the company said.

 

 

Locking in the customer

Decathlon says it has been able to engage a diverse demographic of customers. “Our consumers are connected and digitally-savvy. Over 10 lakh use our mobile app and we have over half a million strong community on Facebook and Instagram,” the Decathlon spokesperson said. One of the advantages of keeping an online connection alive in a lockdown say marketers is that it lets these brands that are built on a pile of data sets, gather even more data. People finishing challenges log in with all their details—age, location, preferences, physical status and so on. 

Such data could be invaluable in the future when the company targets its products and communication, but Robinson Varghese, founder director of Left & Right Communications believes that brands often overlook the value of their online engagements in the rush to generate some chatter and noise. 

“Many brands approach these activities as the fastest and cheapest way to create buzz. These activities have to be planned with a long term focus, only then can it turn into brand loyalty,” says Varghese. He also believes brands should make the most of tools like education, live shows, direct interaction and communication during a lockdown to garner feedback and response from the audience, to make the engagement meaningful.

Currently however, the emphasis is more on creating a virtual self that can talk to online communities when the direct and transactional relationship has broken down. According to Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Mogae Media, while brands must keep the community connections alive during the lockdown, they must also keep it relevant and contextual. For instance he says, “None of these brands has looked at a helpline for mental trauma in these tough times? Basically, there is need to think outside the box of what their own brand stands for and get into what the customer needs at this time,” Goyal adds.