Why Curves Has Thrown A Curve

In the early 1980’s, I was involved with advertising projects for a new chain of fitness gyms in Colorado. My client understood the potential of a generation racing away from the nation’s sedentary traditions, and we pulled in new members at a dizzying pace.

During the last decade, the mainstream health club industry has been locked in a time warp by continuing to focus almost exclusively on youth markets.

Unfortunately for these anachronistic organizations, Boomers have grown older and their fitness needs have changed.

A recent headline in The Denver Post caught my eye: Trend at gyms puts age before beauty. Even before dissecting this article, I was miffed by the headline’s indelicate juxtaposition: Youth is beauty; age, therefore, is what … ugly?

But the article heralds some good news:

This month, Bally’s Total Fitness will launch its "Build Your Own Membership" ad campaign largely aimed at aging baby boomers, the 78 millions Americans born between 1946 and 1964.

Gyms that vied for the youth market with snazzy juice bars and tanning salons now offer low-impact course like water aerobics, walking and chair aerobics, which aren’t so tough on joints.

The article then quotes the company’s chief marketing officer, Jim McDonald:

"We’re moving away from that ad that only shows young, beautiful people with a Greek-god physique."

One obstacle to evolution of the fitness industry has been slow recognition – even denial – of an aging country. That’s why the mainstream fitness industry has been recently losing substantial market share to more aging-sensitive organizations such Curves for middle-aged women and Cuts for middle-aged men.

The upstarts have developed marketing strategies around the beauty they see in middle-aged adults … and not just their wealth. Launched in 1992, Curves experienced franchise growth unparalleled in the fitness industry, as summarized on the company Web site:

Curves is the largest fitness franchise in the world with over 9,000 locations worldwide. Curves reached 1,000 locations within 36 months and 9,000 locations in just ten years. Curves has been consistently ranked in Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the best new franchises in their annual survey and has now entered Guinness World Records as "The world's largest fitness center franchise."

Started by Boomer Gary Heavin, an early pioneer in the fitness industry, Curves owes much of its success to referrals, not just "We’ve reinvented ourselves for you" ad campaigns. Curves is a place where middle-aged women can exercise without being cast as something less than Greek goddesses.

The Denver Post article finishes with another insightful observation from David Goodspeed, an executive with Gold’s Gym, a Southern California chain that has traditionally focused on youth markets:

"One of the barriers we have is getting this (Boomer) population comfortable going into a fitness center. It’s really foreign to them, of another generation."

At the end of the article, Goodspeed further confesses that his colleagues are "all coming around and seeing value of having this older population."

Goodspeed isn’t quite up to speed yet, and neither are his counterparts at Bally’s. Developing the Boomer market means more than throwing a few ads together and adding chair aerobics to the program. It means embracing the customer and reflecting her beauty at any age, while understanding what she wants and needs from fitness. It means building or rebuilding the brand from the ground up to eliminate preconceptions and prejudices.

Last February, Nautilus, Inc., owners of such fitness equipment brands as Stairmaster and Bowflex, invited me to be a keynote speaker at the company’s first international sales conference. Gregg Hammann, president and CEO, and Jim Brennan, vice president of enthusiast brands, view the Boomer market as a strategic priority, and to them this means more than just a superficial overhaul. It means understanding the heart and soul of the Boomer market and then building product marketing strategies that ring with authenticity, an approach that virtually guarantees a fit future.

Comments

[Cara Fletcher]

I think water aerobics is the best way for women to stay in shape and it's for all ages.