The Content Strategy of Gymshark

The Content Strategy of Gymshark

YINGJING YE  May 20th, 2018

Gymshark is an online fitness clothing brand targeting the young generation aged between 15 to 25, which was founded by Ben Francis, a university student in 2012. The successful content marketing strategy refers to a very important factor leading to the good performance of Gymshark. The pre-tax profits and revenues of the company reached £1.5m and £12.8m respectively in 2016.(Sunday Times, 2017) Pullizzi (2014) illustartes that content marketing strategy refers to attract the targeting auidence through creating and distributing valuable contents to them.

Train for life series  

“Train for Life” series videosare most successful contents of Gymshark attracting millions online followers contributing to the formation of a strong brand community.   (Sunday Times, 2017) 
Different from Nike who emphasizes motivational slogans such as "Yesterday you said tomorrow”, "Don't tell people your dreams. Show them." "Just do it."and so on, 'Train for Life' series of Gymshark show personal experience including the mindset and the training skills of popular fitness social media influencers to encourage pursuit of healthy lifestyle. It reflects the information value provided to the audience. Pulizzi and Barrett(2008) suggest that the post and distribution of educational content usually can attract or retain online audience effectively. 

Compared with the endorsement of sport celebrities such as Michael Jordan or David Beckham, the training experience of the fitness social media influencers tend to be more pratical and creditable and achievable, which also encourage the audience to share the information to their friends. The contents aim to deliver to message that if you train as hard as me, you will be as fit as me to motivate the audience. Despite of muti platforms promoting strategies, the “Train for Life” series mainly are posted on Youtube official channel and Facebook account. Youtube channel is beneficial to break the limit of the boundaries and raise the brand recognition in the whole world. While the post on Facebook account show an effective and more direct reach to the targeting audience such as university students and the gym doers. From the perspective of the audience, Facebook platform facilitates them to find the like-minded people or share the information to their friends, which also reflects the entertainment value provided by Gymshark. From the perspective of Gymshark, the company makes a good use of the Facebook platform to build a closer relationship with the followers, build and expand the brand community through the valuale contents. Gymshark usually reply to the comments of the followers under the posted contents on social media platforms. Pepper and Roger (2011) shows that communication and discussion with the audience can  increase the value provided by the contents furtherreinforcing brand loyalty. Currently, the followers of Gymshark on Instagram and Facebook reached 1.1million and 1.2million reflecting a brand community for fitness training information exchange and making friends. The contents and the brand community differentiates Gymshark from the competitors effectively.  

Train for life series

Burn for life series

Although Gymshark never introduces or promotes products on the social media platforms, the contents posted by the Gymshark is closely relevant to the core value. (Family: Our community of athletes, artists and visionaries stretch all the way across the globe. We are a family of like-minded individuals working to bring our respective visions to life.) (Gymshark.com) It reflects staying on the brand. (Kingsnorth ,2016) For example, the “Burn for life series” ( photos of the fans in pop up stores)  on Facebook show that  like minded people from different culture or with different figures gathered together owning to same belief and same lifestyle. All of them are Gymshark families. Consistently, Vargo and Lusch,(2011) also points out that inbound marketing becomes very effect and efficient when the customers extend themselves to the brand. For example, the customers use the brand to construct the identity of themselves.

In conclusion, the appropriate contents, high quality communication and brand community lead to the success of Gymshark. In term of the suggestions for other brands,  firstly it is very important to make the content creditable. Currently, many brand exaggerate the quality or functions of the products or motive the audience through celebrity endorsement, which probably make the content less persuasive and reduce the desire for content sharing.The celebrities tend to be talented while their experience usually legendary, which indicate less achievable for the public. Furthermore, promoting the brand personality traits ( the emotional signs and desirable characteristics of a brand) in the contents encourages customers extend themselves to the brand contributing to the formation of brand community. Finally, muti platform promoting strategy and high quality communication are beneficial to raise the brand recognition and reinforce the customer loyalty. 

Reference

Gymshark 2017. About us Available at: https://uk.gymshark.com/pages/about-us [Accessed 20 May, 2018 ]

Kingsnorth, S. 2016. Digital Marketing Strategy: An integrated approach to online marketing. London: Kogan Page.

Vargo, S.L. and Lusch, R.F. 2011, “It’s all B2B and beyond: toward a system perspective of the market”, Industrial Marketing Management, 40 (2), pp. 181-187.

Peppers, D. and Rogers, M. 2011, Managing Customer Relationships: A Strategic Framework, 2nd ed., Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

Pulizzi, J. and Barrett, N. 2008, Get Content, Get Customers, Voyager Media, Bonita Springs, FL.

Pulizzi, J. 2014. Epic content marketing: how to tell a different story, break throught the clutter, and win more customers by marketing less. New York: McGraw Hill.

Sunday Times 2017, Available at:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clothing-brand-idea-is-working-out-well-for-a-uni-dropout-zbm338lw9  [Accessed 20 May, 2018 ]