In a season where many gym chains offer miracles, Crunch Fitness’ new campaign is sticking to a humbler promise: Feel good, not bad.
New spots from agency Familiar Creatures compare some of life’s unpleasant moments -- ceiling goop falling in your food at a restaurant, getting stuck in a hotel full of clowns, or being held hostage by raccoons -- to the good feeling that comes from a Crunch workout.
The campaign builds on the platform introduced in late 2023, taking into account some key differences, says Chad Waetzig, CMO. First, the grind of daily life is wearing away people’s fitness motivations. “We found that six out of every 10 consumers struggle with the motivation to exercise regularly, and that percentage increased over the last year.”
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People are as convinced as ever that exercise is vital for mental health, at 90%, and that the main reason they exercise is because it makes them feel good, at 80%. And 90% believe workouts should be fun. But they increasingly feel they don’t know how to get the right results from home workouts or have the right equipment.
“Those insights suggested that we’re telling the right story with 'Feel good, not bad,’ but we need to go a little harder,” he says.
Another reason for the new ads, Waetzig tells Marketing Daily, is that 2024 was exceptionally rough on people, causing them to revert to some pre-pandemic levels of sloth. “Last year was very stressful, and that’s an important part of our campaign. We know people feel like they're carrying the weight of the world, whether it was the 2024 presidential election or wars in Europe and the Middle East.”
When people retreat from the realities of current events, “my hypothesis is that they step away from fitness,” he says.
“Feel good, not bad” continued to generate exceptional results, he says, even as the months ticked by. Lead production rose 30% in the second half of 2024, including a 6.3% year-over-year gain at established clubs.
Waetzig says the company continues to see substantial gains in brand awareness, too, including a 20% jump in the last quarter of 2024.
“We want to solidify our place as the No. 2 in the category, challenging the market leader,” he says.
That leader, of course, is Planet Fitness, “which has an advantage of about five-to-one over us in terms of footprint.”
Crunch currently has 500 clubs, with about 400 in the U.S. “There's only a couple of states where we don't have a presence,” Waetzig says, “but we don't have the density that Planet Fitness does.”
The new spots will air on TV, CTV, OTV, and social media, including six-, 15- and 30-second versions. While messaging focuses on an 18-to-39 consumer group he describes as “young, strong and social,” media buys aim to reach those 18 to 49.