The Health and Fitness category is constantly changing, with new competitors emerging daily in the form of apps, boutique fitness classes, and more. In order to stay ahead of the game and to bring in the next generation of members, Planet Fitness aimed to recruit a younger audience by providing them with the one thing other gyms don’t: a free membership.

Most gyms don’t allow anyone under 18 to join. And if they do, it’s a requirement to be with a parent at all times. So, Planet Fitness invited teens ages 15-18 to work out all summer long at any of its more than 1,800 locations throughout the United States from May 15 through September 1 as part of the Teen Summer Challenge.

Teens ages 15-18 represent the next target audience for health and fitness clubs. So, by offering a safe space for teens to exercise and spend time with their friends, Planet Fitness aimed to help this new audience pursue an active lifestyle over the summer, while attempting to set them up for success through adulthood.

THE CREATIVE IDEA:

Launch a nationwide, FREE summer fitness program exclusive to teens, as a way to fuel a summer full of activity for a generation that trades school for their screens as soon as the semester ends.

CONCEPT:

Promote the Teen Summer Challenge by creating ‘Summer Affliction' themed content that alluded to fictional summertime ailments that only teens would understand, being the digital natives they are.

Gen Z, which encompasses teens ages 15-18 today, is the most inactive generation ever. And activity levels are at their lowest during the summer when school’s out.

According to Pew Research, teens spend more than 3.5 hours a day on screens while on summer break. This is far more time than they spend exercising. Without action, this unhealthy trend threatens to follow them into adulthood, causing far-reaching physical and mental health issues.

Planet Fitness discovered with the right motivation, teens would happily set down their devices and start moving, So, how can we help? We lifted age restrictions, allowing teenagers to join every one of our 1,800+ locations, and let every teen in America work out for free all summer long.

Before teens got out of school, Planet Fitness provided the administration of 2,526 high schools with posters to distribute to the student body, and a digital toolkit containing flyers, sample social media content and email copy to educate them on the program.

To launch the Teen Summer Challenge, we partnered with Caleb McLaughlin to announce the initiative on Good Morning America, and continued to release additional content on social media to promote teens signing up and working out throughout the rest of the summer.

As teens were starting to get out of school, ‘Summer Affliction' themed launch content was debuted on Instagram and Facebook. Snapchat, which was integral to our media strategy, was utilized to target high school-aged students within a 10-mile radius of a Planet Fitness location. During the program, a total of 25 ads ran across Facebook, Instagram and Snap.

More than 900,000 teens signed up for the national program, logging nearly 5.5 million workouts.

On social media, the program launch content was the year’s best performing posts on Planet Fitness native channels, with up to a 30% engagement rate.

Snapchat netted 66M+ impressions and exceeded engagement benchmarks by more than double.

Through school outreach, Planet Fitness reached an estimated 2,809,011 students within close radius of its fitness clubs across 10 key markets.

Overall, Planet Fitness garnered 2.1 billion PR impressions, gaining coverage across 50 states and Canada, and received 4,000+ earned media placements.