Brand your body

By Amy Lee 

Atkins, Hollywood, South Beach, Master Cleanse, Zone, Dukan. Over the last decade there’s been a proliferation of diets with capital letters. Celebrity diet setters who claim to have the key to skinny nirvana. Pseudo medical insights that rationalize bizarre eating habits. And merchandise to follow.

We’ve become accustomed to branded diets advocating that we only put certain things in our bodies at certain times. Sometimes they work. Often they result in only a short-term loss of inches, and some less pleasant side effects (as anyone who’s lived with a Cabbage Soup diet devotee can tell you). 

And yet, we can’t afford to ignore our health. Obesity can be fatal – shockingly, kids in America today are the first generation expected to live shorter lives than their parents. Food habits are a  huge part of that problem. But so is our increasing lack of activity. Nike and partners’ ‘Designed to Move’ report reveals that inactivity is expected to kill more people than smoking this year. Activity is vital, in every sense of the word. 

So, it’s interesting to see that fitness brands are emerging to rival diet gurus for people’s attention. SoulCycle has taken New York by storm: it’s indoor cycling but with added motivational music, mood lighting and confessional therapy that makes spinning somehow more sexy and addictive. On both sides of the Atlantic, CrossFit is also creating its own ‘cult’. Like many of the best consumer brands out there, it builds a community (posting a new workout online every day that’s followed by CrossFit gyms across the world), encourages sharing (people are beating the clock and each other’s times), and has a clearly defined approach recognisable anywhere (a unique mixture of aerobic, gymnastic and weight lifting activities that involve a circus-like mixture of props – ropes, tires, batons etc.). Perhaps more than most enterprises, they also have complete staff buy in: they are literally living the service, body and soul.

These are powerful brands, growing quickly. You hear about them at parties. You see them listed under ‘interests’ on CVs. Of course you see the branded hoodies and bags. But you also see the bodies. Afriend of mine spotted another CrossFit disciple across the room at a wedding just by checking out the definition of her shoulders (and perhaps sensing the same whiff of obsession). 

I’m not sure what this new fitness fervour means. Time will tell whether they have the focus and innovation to survive long term. But I’m happy to see that some of the smartest tactics in brand building are being applied to getting us more active, and I’m willing to give it a go.

Amy Lee is a senior strategist at Wolff Olins New York.

  Image via http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/crossfit