For more than 50 years, Les Mills has been helping people make more joyful fitness choices. They invented group fitness with music and choreography – with classes like BodyPump and BodyCombat – and they have spent reinventing fitness classes in a way that turned them into New Zealand and Australia’s most iconic fitness brand.

But elsewhere, almost no one had heard of them. In America, one of the biggest group fitness markets in the world, they had just 5% unaided awareness. So they needed a way to turn heads and break into the oversaturated American fitness market.

We gave away working visas to people from other countries so they could come and learn to live and work out like a New Zealander. Les Mills instructors would train them to get their endorphins moving, and the winners would attend the Les Mills Happy Lab with lead fitness scientists, to learn more about the science behind fitness and happiness.

Our launch film invited people to apply. We collaborated with Brett Goldstein, famous for his grumpy professional soccer-playing character Roy Keny in Ted Lasso, and partnered with Andreas Nilsson to depict his journey from a punishing workout to the happiest place on Earth: New Zealand.

Brett became our very first Happiness Ambassador. “When I traveled to New Zealand, I saw first-hand why the island nation is one of the world’s happiest countries,” he said. And that served as the invitation to open this opportunity to the world.

As fitness motivations became less about physical sacrifice and more about mental wellness, especially among the younger audiences Les Mills wanted to bring in, we needed a way to communicate that there was a less grueling, happier way to work out.

Between music-powered workout designs, charismatic New Zealand instructors, and industry-leading diversity of class offerings on LESMILLS+, the brand’s overall strategy was to make people’s fitness choices more joyful.

But it’s not enough to tell people there’s a more joyful way to work out, especially with an emotion as overused and even eye-rolly as happiness. Instead, we had to make it easier for people to feel the difference that more joyful, and share that feeling.

So, instead of inviting people to subscribe to yet another fitness service, we invited them to immerse in our fitness philosophy at the source, through a three-month opportunity that we called the Happiness Ambassador program.

Just after the series finale of Ted Lasso – around the time show’s cast visited the White House to promote about mental health and happiness – and right as speculation peaked on what would come next for the internet’s favorite curmudgeonly athlete, Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent, we launched The Happiness Ambassador Program.

This three-month immersive program gave people a chance to live and work out in one of the happiest places on Earth, and the home of Les Mills’ endorphin-boosting fitness classes – New Zealand.

The program gave two people the chance to work out like a Kiwi by immersing in Les Mills’ uniquely positive approach to fitness, including round-trip airfare to New Zealand, and a three-month itinerary filled with active adventures and training with Les Mills founders and instructors.

We posted the application on Instagram and TikTok, and engaged fitness enthusiasts from around the world to share the opportunity.

We launched the ambassadorship application across Instagram and TikTok and received 15,000 entries in just 48 hours. By the end of the campaign we received over 24,000 applications.

The ultimate goal was exposing more people to all that Les Mills has to offer. U.S. brand awareness increased by 74% from 5% to 8.4% in the three months after the campaign launched.

New Zealand Tourism Lead David Downs is petitioning to rename the standard country tourist visa from “visitor visa” to the “Happiness Visa” to encourage more of these immersive experiences for travelers coming to New Zealand.