A popular London fitness center, Gymbox, unveiled its newest marketing campaign on the 17th of September, 2024, showing just how innovative out-of-home (OOH) advertising can be.
Known for its creative and culturally in-tune marketing strategies, such as creating a New Year ad campaign with contrasting humorous details of what Londoners are up to at certain times of day, it’s not the gym’s first time doing something creative with OOH.
Gymbox has especially taken it to a new level these past weeks. Outside of the Arsenal Emirates Stadium in North London were two blacked-out billboards set next to one another, one displaying a start line and the other a finish line. Through this, Gymbox has elevated experiential advertising displays and given Londoners an exciting experience with which to associate their brand.
Passersby were encouraged to race others to find out who was the fastest in a 10-meter dash. Gym staff equipped with velocity radars announced the winners and compared the results to Olympic 100-meter sprinters.
Rory McEntee, Gymbox’s director of marketing, has created a valuable marketing opportunity as Marketing-Beat.co.uk noted that race results were to be shared across TikTok and Instagram, allowing the fitness center to provoke social media virality from this advertising initiative.
The fitness community is Gymbox’s home demographic, but this campaign allows them to tap into it far beyond that. Through incentives, this London gym enables the general public to connect with their facilities by gifting a racer with a free 12-month membership for the fastest time. Gymbox is accessing untapped markets and attracting the public to use these services through this campaign, taking advantage of its creativity to increase its return on investment (ROI).
Creating a physical advertising experience such as this allows users to interact with brands more emotionally. Experiential advertising forms positive feelings of joy and trust between the user and the brand, ultimately instilling a lasting impression on potential consumers.
Gymbox performed this advertising initiative so that not only were they left with long-term positive feelings, but they were also more likely to use their services. Gamifying ads, such as the billboard racing campaign, promotes a sense of enjoyable competition with a chance to win something beneficial. Psychologically, this may associate future connections between the brand and the racing participants with feelings of positive results when using the gym services.
When formulating innovative campaigns such as this one, Gymbox carefully considers the metrics of the most likely demographics to enroll in their gym’s services. With past campaigns, according to BMB Agency, they collected various data points through surveys of gym members and crafted ads all around London that were clever and witty, encouraging a considerable amount of Londoners to take up their services.
It looks like Gymbox did something similar with this campaign. By placing a competitive experience outside a sports arena, they were likely to reach sporty people who typically enjoy competition and physical activity. Giving them a chance to flex these interests outside of a prevalent sports arena only made it exponentially more likely that they would participate in the campaign, increasing the chance of using Gymbox’s services afterward—winning the competition or not.
Constructing experiential campaigns such as this requires thorough collection and analysis of demographic data to yield positive results. Gymbox did just that and has been through numerous campaigns.
Innovative, clever, eye-catching, and enjoyable, Gymbox knows its target audience and ensures that they are spoken to in a way that undoubtedly creates cheeky positivity. This method of marketing and advertising is precisely what innovation is about. It’s sharp, and targets potential customers directly on the bulls-eye so that they feel a connection without even realizing that was the entire plan. Masters of London marketing and advertising, Gymbox did a job well done.
