This brand is not for you

I've seen this Planet Fitness spot quite a bit the past few weeks. Ah, right, that's because it's everyone's favorite time of year to get in shape.

The credit cards have been maxed out, the gifts opened, the leftovers discarded, the tree down, and now, it's time to add another membership card to the wallet.

For those who haven't seen the Planet Fitness spot 100 times as I have, here it is:



Sufficiently amusing and fairly well cast in all its exhagerated splendor, but it got me thinking. About strategy, of course. What else?

The approach here is to depict the type of people Planet Fitness isn't for, rather than the kind of people Planet Fitness is for. It seems a natural sequitur here and perhaps because it's so over the top with illustration, it nearly gets away with it.

But is it a sound strategy? Is positioning your brand around who and what it isn't a smart way to communicate with whom and about what it is?

The spot ends and I have a very clear picture in my head of who I won't find as Planet Fitness. Eh hem, who I allegedly won't find at Planet Fitness. But what I don't have is a very good idea of who I will find.

The brief for this spot likely split gym-goers into two, fairly generic, groups; meatheads and everyone else. I'm a pretty dedicated gym goer and I've been a member of several of the larger gym chains. I can say with confidence there are many more types of gym-goers. (PS - every gym claims to be anti-meathead. My last gym had a "no grunting" policy. Trust me when I say, there were plenty of grunts and plenty of grunters. This sort of thing almost has the opposite impact.)

In any case, all these gyms running around claiming to be "the gym for everyone but meatheads" don't quite have a unique selling proposition. The anti-protein chugging, creatine inflated, swollen head grunting thing seems to be taken. And again. And again. And again.

So, while the spot is funny enough, I'm not sure the strategy does much to differentiate it from the rest of the six pack. (get it, six pack? just kidding)

Through no fault of creative execution, this spot comes up a bit OFF STRATEGY.