UK leisure operator Everyone Active has rolled out a new brand platform called Much More, supported by national television advertising for the first time in the company’s history. The campaign, created with creative agency Wraith, positions the operator’s leisure centres as places that do far more than host workouts.
What the campaign says
Rather than leading with equipment, class timetables or price, Much More focuses on the everyday moments happening inside Everyone Active facilities and the emotional outcomes attached to them: learning new skills, building confidence, making friends, improving wellbeing and creating memories.
Two executions anchor the work. Much More Than a Swimming Lesson frames children’s swim classes as confidence and friendship builders. Much More Than a Gym Membership widens the lens to physical and mental wellbeing, and highlights the operator’s You+ wellness membership.
The company describes the move as a significant investment in brand marketing. Commercial director Alison Ford said the aim is to show “the breadth of what modern leisure provision can offer” and the positive emotions that come from being active, adding that at its heart the campaign is about changing how people think about leisure so the brand resonates beyond time spent in a centre.
Where it will run
This is a full-funnel rollout rather than a TV-only burst. The campaign spans:
- National TV advertising, a first for the brand
- Customer communications and CRM channels
- Digital channels and a dedicated online campaign hub
- Social media and PR
- In-centre activity across its facilities
- Local social promotion, with site teams sharing community stories and experiences
That last point is the interesting one. National creative sets the emotional frame; local teams supply the proof. It is a hub-and-spoke model that many multi-site brands talk about and few execute consistently.
Why it matters for marketers
Fitness and leisure marketing has long been trapped in a promotional cycle: joining fees waived, first month free, January discount blitz. That drives sign-ups but not loyalty, and it trains customers to wait for the next offer. Shifting to an emotional, benefit-led platform is an attempt to build brand equity that survives outside peak season.
The structure here follows a familiar and effective category-entry-point logic. Instead of competing only when someone decides “I should join a gym”, the brand attaches itself to a wider set of everyday motivations: my child needs to learn to swim, I want to feel less anxious, I want to meet people locally. Each is a separate door into the same business.
The choice of linear TV is also notable at a moment when many performance-led brands have drifted almost entirely into paid social. For a business with a large national footprint and a broad demographic, broadcast still buys reach and credibility that hard-to-scale digital targeting struggles to replicate. The lesson for Indian marketers running multi-city service networks, whether that is fitness chains, clinics, coaching centres or coworking brands, is the same: reach media builds the frame, local content closes the gap.
What to take away
If you are building something similar, three practical prompts:
- Name the outcome, not the product. “Much More Than a Swimming Lesson” is a positioning statement disguised as an ad title.
- Give local teams a template. Community storytelling only scales when the creative rules are simple enough for non-marketers to follow.
- Set brand metrics before launch. Awareness, consideration and membership retention matter more here than click-through rates.
Everyone Active managing director Duncan Jefford is due to speak at the HCM Summit in London on 22 September, where more detail on the strategy may surface.
Source: sportsmanagement.co.uk
