Challenging Bowflex to rediscover its roots in reinventing home fitness.
The business of being Bowflex
As Nautilus brand agency of record, we stepped into our relationship with the organization at a time of significant inter-organizational upheaval & a company in contracture in spite of an expanding market in health and fitness.
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\UP first sought to understand the opportunities & deficiencies within the health & fitness category, revealing an industry with no long range focus on sustained success, fixated on the outmoded idea that fitness was only either about strength or cardio training,
with no balance between aspiration & attainability — producing a highly polarized & fragmented market.​
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The response to these conventions we saw the clear opportunity for Nautilus to race to fill the vacuum created by this polarization, creating a new holistic, balanced definition of the accepted fitness disciplines, allowing audiences to participate in defining realistic motivators & goals driving brand dialogue & engagement, in order to initiate a fit cultural revolution based on (Life Fit Success).
​​The practical outcome of this effort resulting in a reinvigoration of the Bowflex brand & activation of the health & fitness market unlike anything the brand had seen since its launch in the 1980s.
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Results:
2x Bowflex product family revenue in 24 months & 4x in 36 months, growing from a $98M market cap to a $406M over 3 years, surpassing its nearest market competitor Beach Body in year over year growth.
A polarized, fragmented & over-saturated fitness market landscape left consumers with a distorted, confusing & imbalanced fitness offering creating a brand vacuum Bowflex could occupy. We called “Life/Fit Success”
MANIFESTO— The world of Home Fitness is fatefully fragmented, full of fraudulent claims and littered with the corpses of endless empty promises. Each brand trying to beat the same drum louder than the next, all the while expecting to produce a melody from within the din. Home Fitness has become an industry of fad and flamboyance designed to profit off of peoples failure rather than lifetime achievement. Therein we saw an overwhelming opportunity to own something bigger, better than the sale, an ongoing relationship, one that would propel a fitness revolution. Not one demanding audiences march to a different beat of the same old drum, but as singers in a grand new opera. One in which they can partake in playing out their own masterpiece. An ongoing work we call Life/Fit Success. So world, we give home fitness back to you, to cheer you on, to support your every need, to share in your story, and your glory, to inspire and applaud your continual success—
be fit for life.
The key brand goal was to drive engagement through brand dialogue, in every way possible. One of the many programatic vehicles we devised to drive this included digital work out trading cards. Card trading generated additional product discount promo codes while creating trackable medium from pre-consideration phase through purchase.
BOWFLEX IS AN INVITATION TO A LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE. BY REDEFINING FITNESS AS A GET TO NOT A GOT TO.
SURFACE DISRUPTION
on the Bally's Las Vegas pool at night. The projection was clearly visible from the rooms facing the hotel pool and resulted in more than a few late night dips.
Immersive, projected user feeds. Snap the QR code. Post what fitness is to you. See it projected in real time.
Branded social experiment: Placed Treadclimber statics directing traffic up down escalators. Engagement recorded & posted to social media.
Fitness is in everything.
JUMP ADS
WE PROVOKED AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT VIA INTERACTIVE DIGITAL ADS, INVITING USER GENERATED CONTENT & PEER TO PEER INFLUENCE.
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FITNESS IS GOING UP THE DOWN ESCALATOR
