• by Sarah Mahoney , 83 minutes ago

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Peloton is introducing its first foldable -- and most affordable -- treadmill ever, with a high-octane launch: Singer Miley  stars in the “Let Yourself Run” effort, showing off her moves, her lungs, and the title track of her new album, “Bass Persuades.”

For Peloton, the campaign launching the Peloton Tread Flex highlights a new direction and a critical moment. While it just wrapped the first full year of profitability in the company’s history, sales are down for the year and flat in the latest quarter. And increasing churn means it’s losing subscribers.

For Miley, it’s a chance to focus on her new name (she rebranded sans Cyrus earlier this month) and her 10^th studio album. Miley is a Peloton member who uses her Peloton Tread to train her lungs,

The spots, directed by Bethany Vargas, known for such videos as Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” and commercials for the Gap,  aim to match the rhythm of Miley’s run with the new song. With the inclusion of Peloton instructor Adrian Williams, they also highlight the strong bond Peloton members sometimes have with their trainers.

Ads are running on TV, streaming and online video, with paid digital, social and digital out-of-home. And the push will also include a Miley Artist Series on the platform, timed for the Oct. 1 product launch.

The in-house campaign extends Peloton’s ongoing “Let Yourself Go” campaign, and the company hopes it can make fitness feel more like fun and less like a demand from your Apple Watch.

“We’re leading a shift in the cultural conversation around fitness at Peloton,” said Megan Imbres, Peloton’s CMO, in the release. “We’re moving away from high-pressure optimization and data obsession towards an era of optimism that celebrates what the body can do.” Miley, she continues, brings “an electric energy to the Peloton Tread Flex that transforms movement into total freedom.”

The Tread Flex is priced at $2,195, a fraction of the company’s high-end Tread + Vision, which goes for $6,695, and substantially less than the mid-range Tread Vision, which goes for $3,495. It also takes up 50% less floor space, which could significantly expand its audience.

But while the struggling company has improved its profitability in recent months, some investors are losing patience with the long-promised comeback. Paid connected fitness subscriptions ended the year at 8.8% lower than the prior year.

With full-year revenue down and subscriber losses deepening, the company last month said it now expects full-year revenue for fiscal ’27 to decline about 3.9%, slipping to between $2.3 billion and $2.4 billion.

Brian Nagel, who covers the company for Oppenheimer, is encouraged by significant cost improvements and cash discipline, but notes that growth remains sluggish.

And while Oppenheimer still rates Peloton as likely to outperform its peers, Nagel notes that rating is “speculative in nature…While we are encouraged by efforts on the part of new leadership to introduce more aggressively a large suite of new products and promises of meaningful balance sheet optimization,” he writes, the latest results “offered little in the way of tangible progress on these fronts.”