VIDEO
Bringing SMART TECH gym equipment home
One aspect of the ‘COVID era’ that has carried over into post-COVID life is the carefully curated at-home experience. Many consumers enjoyed working, shopping, and exercising from within the comfort of their own home and chose to adopt the lifestyle permanently.
Les Mills offers an exceptional in-person experience at all of their 20,000 locations worldwide, so why would their at-home experience be anything less? They approached N4 for help with the conceptual development of a consumer equipment system that would complement and elevate their fitness streaming platform (Les Mills+), keeping it on par with their in-person offering.
We embarked on our mission to completely transform the idea of home gyms, inspire people to get moving, drive significant revenue, and increase retention for Les Mills+.
Details
A crossroads of innovation and user adoption
N4 found that SMART TECH equipment was being adopted by a low proportion of Les Mills+ subscribers as it's out of their budget (or at least perceived to be), they already have other equipment and don't see the true value, and it's a highly competitive market. We also identified that those subscribers that did buy into SMART TECH equipment invested more into their subscriptions and spent more time being active, decreasing the cost per use and improving the lifetime value.
It was evident we needed to highlight the value of SMART TECH to weary users because we saw once they were on board, they get their money's worth. But we weren’t going to do that by making the products cheaper, which would undermine the B2B market. And we weren’t taking the ‘copycat’ route either. We, N4 and Les Mills+, believed in the efficacy of SMART TECH and dove in head first to determine the best way to showcase it.
Blue-sky approach
Our research began by talking to women within our target group to understand where their needs weren’t being met in terms of at-home workouts. Using their feedback, we brainstormed a few high-level concepts aimed at pushing the boundaries of possibility.
After fine-tuning the broad vision, we came up with a feature set of concepts that we felt had clear direction and would push the needle. We focused on optimising how the existing SMART TECH range was packaged, communicated, sold, and improved, as well as exploring new possibilities on the horizon.
Immediate opportunities
To reach the new goal — 50% adoption by Les Mills+ subscribers — we planned to educate interested parties on the value and versatility of SMART TECH and demonstrate its capabilities. Focussing on how the products were presented had to change too; unbundling the products made it easier to purchase a la carte and offered a more personalised shopping experience as we acknowledged everyone's fitness journey is unique, and 'lease to love' opportunities allow a pseudo extended test period.
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