Double Art | Ideas to create desire.
Working with our client British Military Fitness, we’ve created a new fitness brand – Walkfit.
Walkfit with British Military Fitness (BMF) is a new, fun way to get healthy outdoors in your local park. Led by BMF’s highly trained fitness instructors the class will keep you interested with constant variety, achievable challenges and personal encouragement.
Walkfit classes launch in eight venues across London from Monday 6th September. The classes will last for one hour and promise to increase your heart rate, use your muscles and improve your mobility. The BMF instructors will carefully guide you through the activities and exercises of the class, making sure that you work to a level which is right for you. They will encourage and motivate the participants throughout the class so they are fun and sociable and you’ll wonder where the time goes. It’s a whole new type of social fitness – feeling healthier, having fun and making friends.
“We recognised the need for an outdoor exercise class that appealed to a broader audience, focusing on our common goal of getting more people active. We’ve made the classes for everyone, so even if you’re returning to exercise after children, injury or illness, the low intensity class is perfect for you. It’s a totally different experience to a gym or other fitness classes and I can guarantee that you won’t be asked to drop and give me twenty!” says Robin Cope, MD of BMF.
Working with BMF, Double Art co-ordinated quantitative and qualitative research projects to test the concept of a ‘high tempo’ walking and exercise class. The results of these studies were then used by Double Art to develop the brand identity and the communication strategy for launch. Director of Double Art Peter Blackman commented:
“Walkfit has been an incredibly interesting project for us all to work on. First of all our research told us a lot about how a significant proportion of the population are leading such active and healthy lifestyles that they just don’t have time to get to a gym. So when we went to them with the Walkfit concept, we got an incredibly positive response to the brand promise of being outside in the fresh air, in a park close by to where they lived, and having an expert instructor who made the class fun, social and interactive.”
“With the brand positioning and proposition agreed, all that remained was to prepare launch communication (both online and offline) which was simple and clear. The clever part of Walkfit is the way it delivers a highly effective workout whilst not being an unpleasant physical experience. It didn’t need a further level of oh so clever communication which got in the way of telling people what this new brand delivered. We’re extremely pleased with the campaign and we think that this brand is going to be a major success”.
To find out more, visit walkfit.co.uk and follow Facebook.com/Walkfit.
We’ve entered a team into the Sustrans Cheddar Adventure.
Starting from the CREATE centre in Bristol city centre, it’s an “epic 56 mile mountain bike challenge from Bristol to Cheddar and back. Take in the Ashton to Pill path and the Strawberry Line, climb the stunning Cheddar Gorge, cross the Mendips then return through Ashton Court.”
Sounds great. Let’s just hope that this doesn’t happen to Pete again eh?
He says it hurt. A lot. Looks good though.
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Our friends over at Simpleweb recently asked the question in a blog post ‘Is Facebook your next CMS?’
The ‘local pages’ developed in conjunction with us for British Military Fitness were one of the examples that they used to show how companies can use Facebook Open Graph to populate their own website with content such as news and photos.
Visit the site >>
But does this make it a CMS? Maybe, but perhaps what is more interesting to clients and brand owners is the different way in which consumers will interact with a brand on facebook versus the way that they might contribute on an ‘official’ site.
Take the BMF facebook fan page for example. Regular posting. Lots of interaction. Most of it lighthearted and positive – but when people do ask for information, they get it. When they do post something negative (and they do) – they feel free to do so, and also get a swift response from both the page admins and other BMF members. So while facebook Open Graph might not spell the end for CMS – it might just sound the death knell for official site members areas.
Visit the site >>
We experienced a similar situation some years ago when we were working with Bristol Rugby. The official site had a forum. Could they get anyone to go on it – could they heck! So where were all the fans? Where were all those thousands of people passionate about the club?
Well, they were all on the Bristol Rugby pages of Sportnetwork.net which hosts fanzines for rugby, cricket and football clubs, both professional and amateur. So why were all the fans on this site and not on the official Bristol Rugby forum? We thought then, and still do, that it is simply that the ‘offie site’ (as it is known) is the place where you go to find about team news and match information. It’s not the place to go when you want to have a rant about why the manager has picked Joe Bloggs out of position, or why the shirt designs keep changing every season.
To do that would be, to use a school analogy, like booking an appointment with the headmaster and going in and explaining yourself in a calm rational manner, when all you really want to do is to scribble something very nearly libellous on the walls of the boys lavatories. On an ‘offie site’ you just can’t let rip, or relax and be yourself. Whereas you can on a fanzine, and you most certainly can on facebook.
Like most professional sports clubs, Bristol Rugby are now on Facebook. They recently lost a crucial match against Exeter Chiefs which denied them promotion to the Premiership. In the days after this (relative) sporting disaster, the focus on the official website was on looking forward positively to another season in the Championship. Of course, over on the fanzine and the facebook group – the fans were giving full vent to their feelings. Since on these informal, familial, community based sites the fans felt that they could. They were angry – and they felt ok about telling people about it.
So perhaps this is the true power of Facebook Open Graph? That is is the end of the members area? We recently did some focus groups for a new product launch for a major client. When we asked the consumers whether or not they would be interested in their being a members area for the potential brand – ’Absolutely not’ came the response. ‘We don’t want another login. We don’t want another brands making online demands of us. We won’t use it’. Suffice to say that the client got the message and we won’t be building a members area, but we will be advising them to have a facebook fan page – because that’s where their consumer will tell them all they need to know about their relationship with the brand.
Double Art has been appointed by At-Bristol, the leading science and discovery centre, to work with their Marketing and PR team on the multi-media launch campaign for the ‘All About Us’ exhibition, due to open in February 2011.
‘All About Us’ is a new family-friendly permanent exhibition to be situated on the ground floor of At-Bristol. It will investigate how the brain and body work together and how this interaction enables us to relate to people and the world around us. It will include more than 50 new or significantly enhanced hands-on exhibits, including real body parts, allowing visitors to test human phenomena.
The £1.5 million exhibition, being developed in-house by At-Bristol’s Exhibition team, has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, and will engage children and adults. The new exhibition builds from and includes some of the most popular exhibits from the previously successful exhibitions, Inside DNA and Your Amazing Brain.
The campaign will consist of outdoor, press, digital advertising, social media and PR.
Director of Double Art Peter Blackman commented:
“As a creative agency, if you had to pick one local visitor destination to work on, it would be At-Bristol. It’s an endlessly fascinating and inspiring place to visit. We’re delighted to be working with them on the launch of such an important exhibition.”
At-Bristol Director of Fundraising and Marketing, Judith Egerton commented:
“We’re looking forward to having Double Art complement the work we already do. It’s been invaluable to have a fresh perspective, and we’ve been impressed by the abundance of good, creative ideas provided by Double Art .”
As one of the UK’s leading science centres, At-Bristol has been helping schools and the general public engage with science since opening in July 2000, celebrating its 10th birthday this year. As a charity, At-Bristol strives to make science accessible to all working with schools throughout the south-west and further afield, community groups and engagement projects. Welcoming 185,000 visitors a year, At-Bristol is the place to go to learn about science in a fun, exciting and hands-on way – with its own Planetarium to learn about the night sky, the chance to make your own animations, play virtual volleyball and soon to discover all about the human body in new, fascinating ways, there’s something for everyone, whatever your age!
The campaign will consist of outdoor, press, digital advertising, social media and PR.
Our new member recruitment campaign for British Military Fitness has gone live online and through outdoor, underground, transport and leafletting media in key cities London, Birmingham, Manchester & Leeds.
The objective of the campaign is to raise awareness amongst the core BMF target audience – who are professional, upmarket 25-30 year olds – and encourage trial of a free class over the summer months. As set out in the client brief, we also needed to communicate that:
- Classes are designed for all abilities, men and women.
- BMF is not a ‘Boot Camp’ style workout – there’s no intimidation factor to get people exercising.
- It’s about creating a motivating environment and maximising team spirit in the great outdoors.
- BMF is fun, friendly and sociable
As we have previously blogged – we firmly believed that in order to replicate the amazing success of BMF in building a fifteen thousand strong membership through word of mouth, it was critical that our work addressed the two key ‘barriers to entry’ for the BMF brand.
We believe that the two crucial areas of concern are ‘bootcamp’ and ‘mud ’. ‘Bootcamp’ – that I will be shouted at and intimidated. ‘Mud’ – that it is outdoors. It will rain. It will be dirty in the local park.
BMF is not bootcamp and most parks are far better kept than people imagine. However BMF is outdoors and it is all about instructor led sessions. Which are huge positives for the brand – if we allow them to be used as such in the marketing communications. If we don’t use them – then we fail to address the key concerns of potential new members, and whatever we say, however many benefits that we list, the consumer will default to a mindset that sees a principle brand differentiator as a potential negative.
So what we did was to use the instructors as the heroes of the campaign – after all, they are charismatic, attractive (so we’re told), and really good fun to be around. We also went across the country and shot the parks where they train so that they looked at their absolute best. Then we added in a selection of class images which demonstrated the diversity of the membership in terms of ability and gender. Finally – we used a headline (on the outdoor) which referenced the fact that the training was outdoors (fresh air) but also communicated change / difference.
Online we used all the same communication elements, but we were also able to draw upon the power of the web to show potential triallists that BMF was not only near to them geographically, but was also a fun, interactive and engaging experience in terms of online community. A learning from previous BMF research into member behaviour showed that engagement away from the park was critical to trial and then retention of new members.
So what we did, in partnership with digital development agency Simpleweb was to create city specific pages for Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and London (others to follow) which are intended to:
- Demonstrate to potential members the fun, friendly and sociable nature of BMF.
- Use the power of existing BMF facebook groups and pages for the benefit of the brand and to drive acquisition.
- Draw together ‘official / central’ and ‘local’ aspects of the BMF brand so that members feel a part of their group and of something bigger.
These new pages would enable BMF to utilise new ‘local’ photography of instructors and parks in conjunction with social media feeds from the communities that they are part of. Again, the instructors will be used in a prominent, welcoming manner, as they are:
- Genuine point of difference.
- Most important interactive aspect of the brand.
- Fundamental to challenging misconceptions..
- Build brand personality.
The parks photography is used prominently because it is also a genuine point of difference. The pages showcase the attributes of exercising outside, and make the parks look inspirational, attractive and inviting.
The pages also use facebook’s new OpenGraph technology. As most BMF instructors already have their own facebook groups/pages as well as twitter accounts, it was simple to make the pages appear ‘busy’ and engaging from the day of launch. The instructors didn’t have to learn a new login procedure or a new CMS system, they just had to keep doing what they were doing, and the local Park / City sections of the pages were constantly being updated and refreshed in terms of content. Not only did this mean that the instructors felt ownership of the new pages from launch, but because there were also feeds coming the BMF ‘Official page’ then central brand messages were also being pushed out around the country.
Visitors to these pages can leave messages, interact with each other and share content. All interactions are also shared on the users actual Facebook page helping to spread awareness of the brand to non BMF users through friends and contacts interaction with it online.
Check out the sites here… London, Birmingham, Manchester & Leeds
The intention is that this will become the focal point of a members online relationship with their BMF community instead of the instructors Facebook page or group. Without losing any of the functionality or ease of use of Facebook, the members will use these pages because it not only involves them with local BMF activity, but also the promotions/ incentives / news being pushed out via the official, central brand page.
Over the summer months we also intend to push out some highly attractive online promotions through these new BMF ‘Local’ pages.
Our first work for British Military Fitness breaks across the UK on Monday. An integrated campaign of outdoor, online and promotional activity will launch in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.
British Military Fitness was founded over ten years ago as an alternative to expensive gyms and leisure clubs, and they are now the largest outdoor fitness company in the UK. All classes are led by serving or ex-armed forces physical training instructors. The success of the business – 100 parks, 15,000 members has been driven almost exclusively by word of mouth. So when we were given the task of marketing the brand to new consumers, the first thing we did was to analyse that word of mouth success. Here’s what we said to the client.
“Why does word of mouth work so well for British Military Fitness?
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Double Art are delighted to announce that the second Ignite Bristol will take place at the Tobacco Factory Theatre on Thursday 15th July.
Once again, we’ll be giving up our time to help out with the organisation, publicity and marketing of the event.
We’ve even submitted a couple of talk ideas for this one – though whether they make the final show, who knows? There have been some brilliant submissions already – Bayesianism (no we don’t know either), NSFW, Deja Vu, Marathon canoe racing, and a social history of the ‘local’ pub to name but a few.
To submit a talk idea, or to find out more about tickets, visit the Ignite Bristol website.
We eat a lot of cake in our office. I share that with you not in the way that many other agency blogs might. The prevailing trend in agency cake revelation seems to be “look, we eat too much cake, and drink too much coffee, doesn’t that make us loveable?” Hmmm. Not sure. Might it be that it’s masking your prodigious drink or drug habits?
No, we are talking of cake because we want to talk about copywriting and what we believe are the similarities between Chicago and Bristol. In advertising terms, if London is New York. Chicago is Bristol. To explain further, here’s the legendary Chicago ad-man, Leo Burnett:
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Summer is here (apparently) and we’ve been out in the park. We’ve not been lounging around though – no lazy games of frisbee followed by an ice cream. Oh no. We’ve been put through our exhausted paces by British Military Fitness.
Invited by BMF to pitch for their advertising account, we signed up for some classes, bought their new i-phone app, and set off for our local park. Carnage followed. Creatives lying around – no change there then we hear you cry – but this time through exhaustion . Account people desperately trying to project manage their way through the hour – but no spreadsheet or timing plan could help them though.
It was worth it though. We won. We even beat some pretty big London agencies – though we can’t say who.
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We have developed a Flash driving game for Continental Tyres through their PR agency, Inside Media. The idea was to develop a fun, interactive game that conveyed the importance of tyre tread and its impact on stopping distances. The game isn’t about speed but skill and concentration.
You can check out the game at http://testmydriving.com and see if you can get in the top 10 to win some great prizes. The #1 spot each month wins a slim PS3.
Below is the final storyboard we created before the Flash development began and screenshots from the game itself.
