This is something that has been debated for years. PERFORMANCE AND BRAND How can he make marketing coexist to increase sales and at the same time increase brand awareness and affinity? These are the questions I'm currently asking myself.
Today's digital marketing landscape is increasingly fragmented, making it increasingly difficult for performance-oriented marketers like Orangetheory to stand out online. To differentiate themselves from the noise, fitness brands are investing in brand-building strategies to better balance business performance and brand marketing spend, according to David Chriswick, senior vice president of brand and communications at Orangetheory. It is said that there is.
“There are new brands coming out too. There are new concepts trying to capture your attention and time. And Orange Theory is no exception among that bunch,” he said. He later added: “Performance will be the fuel for the finals.” [bottom line] In the short term. But at the same time, we need to plant the seeds for the future and make sure we have a healthy pipeline in front of us. ”
For example, Orangetheory Fitness hired comedian Hannah Berner this month to host comedy events and in-person workouts. This workout will also be livestreamed on her TikTok. Chriswick points out that this is a strategy to increase brand awareness. The campaign will be built using paid media from Facebook and YouTube, and will include organic tactics such as social listening, as well as measurement capabilities.
The fitness brand is focused on growing its social presence online and has an active TikTok account with over 14,000 followers. The executive vice president said there are plans to make TikTok a bigger part of the brand's media investments and organic social media efforts. It is unclear what these investments will be, as Mr. Chriswick did not provide further details.
Typically, the bulk of Orangetheory's media spend, about 75%, goes to performance marketing, with the remaining 25% going to things like brand building and experimentation, Chriswick said. (He declined to provide specific media spend or last year's numbers for year-over-year comparisons.) According to Vivvix, Orangetheory Fitness spent more than $11.8 million on media last year, excluding paid social. It is said that it was spent. This figure is slightly higher than the $10.9 spent in 2022.
“We want to be more scientific about what is the right balance and where to bet,” Chriswick said.
In recent years, marketers have focused more on performance marketing than brand marketing, especially as economic headwinds have put marketing budgets under greater scrutiny than ever before. But agencies say they've seen an increase in customer requests for brand building in recent months.
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Claire Russell, head of media at Fitzco advertising agency, says clients can layer on top of their media buys to enhance their efforts, such as experiential marketing and other channels, to build brand awareness and measure it at the same time. They say they are increasingly looking for atypical media channels. Fitzco.
“Performance-first brands are definitely going to struggle with this,” she says. “We're finding that clients increasingly want creative ways to reach their audiences.”
But getting performance-based marketers to buy into brand marketing, which isn't as measurable as performance-based marketing, wasn't easy.
“This is difficult because every dollar you spend in exchange for your performance marketing budget, you lose your brand in the short term, but you're not going to recover much,” Russell says. added. In other words, brand marketing isn't measurable, contributory, or incremental, but it can help build your brand's reputation, stand out from competitors, and retain customers.
Orange Theory Fitness doesn't have perfect measurements either, and remains a performance-oriented brand, Chriswick said. He added, “If you don't have short-term health, you don't have long-term health,” pointing out the importance of brand marketing and performance marketing working more holistically.
“We are very focused on performance and pride ourselves on being able to track and measure while not hindering innovation,” he said. “It’s important for us to try new things, even if we don’t get the big picture.”
