The main focus for us right now is brand consistency and cohesion – ensuring that everything from brand communication to the experience in our gyms, right down to how good people feel when they leave is always consistently high. We're located in some ageing buildings, so the actual fabrication of the building is very different, but the expectation around what the brand should deliver should be the same regardless. We pride ourselves on providing staff to deliver a brand experience and feel-good factors you just won’t find elsewhere – staff who know that everyone is different and who will find ways to get members involved whatever their fitness leveI.

I was at one of our sites recently and I witnessed one of our gym instructors training two women who weren’t keen to try an exercise with dumbbells. And he was like, “Come on, ladies, come and do this.” And he went and got two balloons and got the women on the gym floor doing the same movements with the balloons as he would with some dumbbells. And they were laughing and having such a good time and everyone around them engaged too.

It’s moments like this, these moments of magic that are totally ownable by our gyms, our brand, and are created by our people. These moments have inclusion at their heart and they happen every single day. So, as well as cohesion, I will be focussing on how we tell these brand stories, bringing these moments to life – so that the authenticity of our experience is at the heart of our communications.

We are looking at an influencer marketing strategy and have been thinking about the type of ambassador that we might bring on board – while I think it will help us on our digital platforms massively, it's a challenge because if you don't get it right, it absolutely has no benefit.

For us, it’s about driving awareness and ensuring that whoever we do partner with aligns with our values and feels authentic and connected to our brand and our members. In the north, we are spoilt for choice in terms of professional sports men and women – and Olympic level athletes – but the danger here is thinking about our target market and how they would feel, can they see themselves in that? Would they even aspire to that? How are we helping them achieve their goals by raising the bar to a height that might stop them from starting?

We need to drive our authenticity and inclusivity – we can't partner with anybody that naturally wouldn't exercise in our sites. We want to partner with someone who lives in the heart of the communities we serve – so our customers absolutely relate and see themselves in our ambassadors. I think it will be a very exciting step for us – so watch this space.

We work very, very closely with Public Health England and together we focus on health inequalities. Within Barnsley specifically, it is the worst in the country. So, life expectancy for a female born today is around 67 – 17 years less than places in the south. We need to get behind this and address some of the health inequalities that we're facing.

The concept behind ‘Let’s get going’ is to attract a new audience of people who are “worried well”. Not our traditional members – people that may not ordinarily engage with a gym but are wanting to feel healthier without it being prescribed. More focus on mobility, social wellness and having fun in a relaxed non-gym type environment. Specific activities we will offer include new age curling, line dancing and walking sports.

We need to break down their natural barriers of getting through the doors. Make them feel comfortable that they don't need to have the kit, they can do it in their jeans and t-shirt. ‘Let’s get going’ as a campaign platform is brilliant as it allows us to talk to specific groups and to specific locations directly – so we can be hyper-personalised and direct. To get both the locality of our sites “Let’s get going Barnsley” as well as integrating some of our northern tone and wit into the concepts “let’s chuffing do it” – we know that our customers laugh and engage with this, because that’s what they say too – they feel seen and part of the community we are trying to create.

The campaign embodies our personality and grit in how it speaks, its look and feel, but most importantly, how it represents real people, with real challenges. We know our customers see themselves in the campaign images and this is so important to inspire them to believe they can achieve more than they think – because if the person in the picture can do it, they can too.

Personalisation is key – this is not just about how we might approach a campaign but also how consumers want to buy gym services. For example, we are seeing many more hybrid approaches as customers don’t want to pay for services they don’t use. We know we can no longer offer one price and one service that fits all. We need to think differently about our customer personas and what they want now and in the future. So we are honing in on our customer types to get even closer to who our customers are, which customer persona they fit, and how they want to be marketed to – how they want to sign up – how we can ensure they have a plan that absolutely works for them. So we're just doing a big piece of work with WPA Pinfold to help us do that and create an offering that really works but has this idea of personalisation at its heart. We want and need our members to feel seen and heard.

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