The Fit Nesting Dolls
BRICK
Issue 39 | June 2016
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide David Lubars Chief Creative Officer, BBDO New York Greg Hahn Associate Creative Director Art Director Bianca Guimaraes Senior Art Director Florian Marquardt Senior Copywriter Rodrigo Linhares
Production Team
Director of Integrated Production David Rolfe Executive Producer Neely Lisk Lead Integrated Producer Courtney Fallow Digital Production Company Visorama Diversões Eletrônicas Physical Designer Jeian Jeong Type Designer Marcelo Righini Illustrators Tiago Vas Felipe Blunt Giorgi Popiashvili Gustavo Teixeira Henrique Sanches Isabela Andrade Lima Juarez Rodrigues Julia Quaresma Lukas Doraciotto Luke Bott Marcel Yunes Moyl Cledera Paula Fernandes Paula Isabelle Souza Paulo Cesar Correia Lima Rich Tu Sabine Hegmann Sajid Wajid Shaikh
Other Credits
Account Manager Samanta Martins Senior Communications Planner Nicole Landesman
Date
February 2016
Background
Brick is a small US gym network, with locations in major cities like New York, Boston and LA.
Like all gyms, it suffers from a high drop-off activity rate among members: about 80% of those who join a gym in January quit by June, and only about 50% attend regularly as their initial enthusiasm wanes or they fail to reach their intended fitness targets.
Brick primarily wanted its users to maintain their memberships, and remain motivated to reach their fitness goals, with the secondary goal of attracting new members.
Idea
When they join Brick, new members are mailed a nesting doll. They get a different doll set depending on their sex and fitness goals – ie losing weight, bulking up or preparing for a triathlon. The dolls were designed by different artists.
The dolls – so-called 'fit' nesting dolls – get consecutively thinner without losing much height, effectively an incentive to keep going.
Each doll set carries a flash drive with the new member's five-month fitness plan, and each doll within the set represents a stage in that plan.
Brick set up a website to show the dolls (fitnestingdoll.com), and where members could share their stories.
Results
It's too early for any stats on membership retention, but Brick says the dolls are an effective way to give members the help and support they need to hit their fitness targets.
Our Thoughts
Gym membership is all about habit really, and the big problem is that new habits are hard to build.
So how do you motivate new members to keep going? The nesting dolls, of course, because they help members visualise how they might look as they progress to, and when they hit, their goals.
Another way is through sharing with a gym buddy, which is where the inherent sociability of the dolls comes in – something Brick tapped into with the 'stories' section of the website.
The last time I joined a gym all I got in the mail was a plastic membership card. If only they'd sent me a nesting doll I might have lasted longer. If nothing else, it would have made something nice to display and a talking point.