ANYTIME FITNESS: THE $0 SUPER BOWL AD

Morning!

Today is my 82nd Sunday on the bounce that I’ve sent out a Growing Viral article. That’s over 1.5 years that I haven’t missed a Sunday.

I’m pretty proud of that stat.

But today, I’m even more proud of something else…

This is the FIRST EVER Growing Viral article that has a sponsor.

I’ve refrained from adding sponsors for the longest time. I wanted this to be more of a hobby than an income stream.

But today’s sponsor is a resource I genuinely use myself, in fact, I’ve referenced it in many Growing Viral articles before. So I physically couldn’t turn the offer down.

Without further ado…

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Breaking Down The Strategy

Well, that was cool, but let’s get to the good stuff!

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Which to me and the rest of the UK means it’s just another normal Sunday.

(I honestly don’t even know who is playing or who is tipped to win.)

But for the 100M+ Super Bowl viewers in the US - it’s the biggest day of the year.

And for us marketers… well it’s like Christmas isn’t it.

So today, I thought I’d cover the most intelligent Super Bowl ad campaign I’ve seen this year.

If you haven’t been keeping track of the rocketing cost of Super Bowl ads over the last couple of years, here’s a quick side by side…

Last year: $186,667 per second of screentime.
This year: $233,333 per second of screentime.

That isn’t a typo.

It genuinely costs $200,000+ to get your ad on the TV for 1 second during the Super Bowl this year.

And let’s be honest… no matter how creative or great at marketing you are, the chances of getting any ROI on that is crazy.

It’s overpriced.
It’s ineffective.
And probably unaffordable for most brands.

But this week among all of the chaos on “Marketing Twitter” around which ad would be the best, I found a company that had taken a completely different approach.

Introducing… Anytime Fitness.

While most brands were begging their boss for $7 million for an ad on TV, they spent their time crafting a way to have a successful Super Bowl ad without ever having to spend a penny.

Here’s exactly how they did it:

1) The Concept

The sole aim of the majority of Super Bowl ads is to steal the show. To have people thinking (and talking) about their ad more than any other.

Anytime Fitness wanted to do that without paying the stupidly high prices.

So instead, they ran an ad campaign across socials offering people a years free membership for simply tweeting or posting #JustHeardAnytime anytime they heard “Anytime”.

2) The Reinforcement

This is one of those campaigns that they really need to drill into people’s heads if they want it to be a success.

So that’s exactly what they’ve done.

Over the last week Anytime Fitness have been putting out CONSTANT posts across their socials reminding people of the campaign.

Here are just a few:

3) The Tactic

The surface level of this strategy is simple. They’re going to have thousands of people sat through the game thinking of their brand.

They have an audience of people listening out for “Anytime” at all times.

And vicariously they’re sitting thinking about Anytime Fitness the whole time.

It’s clever, but this isn’t the genius part behind the campaign.

4) The Genius

Every single one of these ads feel like tongue twisters with the narrator constantly saying they word anytime - all the time!

Just have another listen:

That isn’t by mistake.

What they are doing is trying to turn a common cue (in this case, the word ‘anytime’) into a prompt to think about Anytime Fitness.

It’s like the Pavlov’s Dog experiment.

They’re creating a trigger in viewers brains so…
Whenever they hear “Anytime” → They think Anytime Fitness.

An absolutely genius way to give your campaign a longlasting effect.

Granted, this is no new phenomenon. In fact, Tide did something very similar for the 2018 Super Bowl.

There trigger was…
Clean clothing with no stains → Tide.

But truthfully, I think Anytime Fitness’ is a LOT more effective than the Tide ad.

The only quarrel I have with it, maybe they haven’t done it at scale for it to really have an effect?

Nonetheless, you have to tip your hat to them for the sheer creativity they’ve come at this with and I honestly hope it pays off.

Best “Super Bowl” ad of all-time? Probably not.
Most cost-effective? Definitely!

Now, we know how they did it, but how can you do the same?

Honestly, I think this is much more simple than you’d think.

Rather than trying to go at the scale that Anytime Fitness is attacking this at, here’s how I’d approach it:

1. Find something you want to be known for. For me this might be “Newsletters” for example.

2. Plaster that one word or phrase everywhere you are. In your bio, on your website, in your content.

3. As long as the word/phrase is somewhat niche, overtime people should begin to associate you with that word. For the example, when they hear or think “Newsletters” they’d think of me.

Same concept, smaller scale, could be just as effective.

Right, that’s it for today.

But before you go, drop me a reply to this email with your favourite Super Bowl ad of all time.

Super interested to see what you think!

Until next Sunday,

— Niall

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This has been a breakdown of Anytime Fitness' marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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