Marketing in the Madness

Gymbox Dares to Disrupt The Market with Rory McEntee

• Street Agency, Katie Street, Rory McEntee • Episode 52

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Disrupt the market—that’s exactly what Rory McEntee, Brand & Marketing Director at Gymbox, has done with some of the most innovative and daring campaigns in the fitness industry. In today’s episode of Marketing and the Madness, we explore how Rory has successfully disrupted the market, sparking conversations and pushing boundaries with his bold marketing strategies.

Join Katie as she catches up with Rory, who has been a champion of shaking things up, having worked with iconic brands like Everyman Cinema, Paddy Power, and now Gymbox. Rory shares his journey from agency life to in-house marketing, revealing the lessons he's learned about staying true to brand values and constantly finding new ways to disrupt the market by tapping into cultural trends.

Here’s a glimpse of what’s inside this episode:

🎯 Disruptive Marketing Done Right
Rory explains why brands need to be brave and challenge the norm, especially in a crowded market like fitness. Learn how Gymbox continually disrupts the market with bold, innovative campaigns that resonate with their audience and stand out from the competition.

💡 From Crazy Ideas to Marketing Gold
How does a brand like Gymbox turn unconventional ideas into marketing wins? Rory breaks down the process behind standout campaigns—like the infamous “fake bus ad”—and the calculated risks involved in daring to be different.

🔥 Why Culture Matters
Discover how Gymbox fosters a company culture where creativity thrives, and how every employee, from receptionists to sales teams, is empowered to contribute game-changing ideas. Rory reveals how Gymbox's core values—like “Have a Giggle” and “Don’t Be a Dick”—drive both the internal culture and external marketing efforts.

🌍 Tapping into Cultural Trends
Whether it’s creating a Brexit-themed workout class or a CBD-infused yoga session, Gymbox stays relevant by tapping into cultural moments. Rory shares how leveraging societal trends helps the brand disrupt the market and stay ahead of the curve.

📈 Marketing with Small Budgets, Big Impact
Rory reflects on the reality of marketing with smaller budgets and how Gymbox manages to deliver high-impact campaigns that grab attention without breaking the bank. He explains how creativity and strategy can outshine expensive media buys and disrupt the market even with limited resources.

Whether you're a CMO looking for inspiration or a marketer trying to cut through the noise, this episode is packed with actionable insights on building a disruptive brand and staying ahead in today’s competitive landscape.

Tune in now to learn how Gymbox redefines fitness marketing—and why disrupting the market might be exactly what your brand needs.

📢 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to stay updated with future episodes. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share it with your network. Your support helps us continue delivering fresh insights into marketing and business growth.

Rory McEntee:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rory-mcentee-3746a1a/
https://www.gymbox.com/


Connect with Katie Street:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
https://www.instagram.com/streetmate/

Follow Street Agency:
https://street.agency/
https://www.instagram.com/street.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/streetagency/


Rory McEntee:

Marketing should always create a feeling. So whether that feeling makes you nostalgic, happy, sad, angry, marketing is always going to create that emotion. We kind of pride ourselves on having classes from what we call holistic to sadistic. You've got to be brave and do stuff that will rattle the cage. I always say, we ask for forgiveness, enough permission.

Katie:

You wouldn't necessarily think that's a marketing tactic. It's a bit gorilla. You're doing something in a place where you wouldn't expect it. It

Rory McEntee:

went pretty viral. Then I had the ops manager calling the CEO going, who's done all this? And then changing rooms. That's just, it's marketing, right? We're not trying to cure cancer.

Katie:

You guys are brave enough to do something different. Everything that you do, internally and externally, should map back to your values.

Rory McEntee:

Everything we do comes back to challenge your brand being disruptive. I'm almost encouraging them to do it. Nine out of 10 ideas don't make bloody.

Katie:

That's how we grow and operate as a business, because if we don't, then we've become stagnant to enable everyone within the business to generate ideas, try things, not worry about it, if that is an absolute game changer, especially in today's world. Hey guys, and welcome to another what will be amazing episode of marketing and the madness, because I actually have someone who's on my previous podcast coming on today. If you've not been here before, then welcome this podcast really focuses on the innovations that happen in the world of marketing in order for brands and businesses to attract, engage, convert more customers, clients, revenue, whatever it might be. And today is no exception, because I have the fantastic Rory McEntee, who is the marketing director of gym box I get. Am I saying your name, right? Yeah. Rory McEntee,

Rory McEntee:

unusual Irish name, yeah. But you've nailed it, yeah. I've been called a few different things. Rory McEntee is pretty good. You got that's always a

Katie:

release. We met four or five years ago, maybe, yeah, so pre marketing in the madness guys, Rory met me when I did my previous podcast called Word on the Street, which was more for agency leaders around how you know they wanted or how brands wanted to interact, and what brands needed from agencies, whereas this is obviously a totally different topic. So we're going to touch on very different things today. But before we delve into the world of innovation, marketing, the fantastic things that you're doing at gym box, can you tell our lovely listeners a bit about you, the potted history of Rory, what you've been up to in your career, why they should care to listen to you today, and why you're fucking awesome. Oh,

Rory McEntee:

wow, lot to live up to there. Thank you. Thank you. No, you know what I've had? I've had a really interesting career in terms of, I've always kind of gone against the grain. So when all the people in uni were all going to kind of the big clients, unilevers, PNG, I decided to go agency side back when, which I think is why we had that great podcast before I was like, Go agency Yeah, but I think that helped me kind of the pace of the agency world, the kind of all the different clients I worked with. It gave me a really kind of good insight into where I wanted to go in my career. But when I went client side, I went to everyman cinema, who were small at the time. And if people don't know everyman cinema, they're that kind of challenger brand to the multiplexes, the Cine world audience. You have popcorn and sofas, and it's a bit more normal now, but kind of 12 years ago, it wasn't. It was really innovative. And I continued that path then with Paddy Power, which was kind of where I learned my craft. So Paddy Power some of the most disruptive campaigns, from the kind of Cheltenham Hollywood style sign to Lucky pants during the Euros. And that was just a real fun time. Like it was like being back in kind of uni, just coming up with crazy ideas, and there was no idea. It was just so silly. And I kind of just went in. I kind of just followed my my interests, like I was kind of into sport that I did a little bit of Pizza Express and Papa John's, which basically followed my belly sport, pizza movies. And then when I kind of got a little bit, you know, overweight after all that, I joined gym box.

Unknown:

That is the best career journey ever. I love it. So I'm not

Rory McEntee:

too sure what will be next after this, maybe, like funeral homes. As I get a bit older, I'm not too sure, but, yeah, but

Unknown:

you know what it's been. I've

Rory McEntee:

been very lucky. I've always followed kind of what I've got a personal interest in, yeah, as opposed to just following a interesting or a lucrative brand that I could could work for. So it's always been a kind of personal interest, more than anything.

Katie:

What I love is that you're talking about being disruptive. And actually maybe funeral directors need some bit of disruption. What about doing a really cool as fuck funeral

Unknown:

I think you can have so much fun. Yeah, I feel like we've born a new brand here

Rory McEntee:

after this. We should, we should really brainstorm. I'm

Katie:

actually up for that. I was like, yeah, there is none that are fun. And I actually talked. Someone else on the podcast recently about when the world zigs you need to zag. Is So and I think it might be. I can't remember who said it now, it was either Rory, Rory Sutherland, yeah, or

Rory McEntee:

better, Rory, by the way, no,

Katie:

all rories are lovely, but it's so true, isn't it? Like what you've done is you've joined disruptive brands that you love that you can sit but because I do think it's hard as a marketer like I've dipped between sales and marketing throughout my career, but I made a very big promise to myself that I could never work for a brand that I didn't love. So whether I've been working at an agency, or whether, you know, pre that, I've worked in publishing, so I worked for like, cool brands, one of the time cool brands like FHM. I'm not sure if it is that cool now, looking back, slightly sexist, but yeah, when I was in my early 20s, it was cool. And then drinks brands which I loved, I could never work for a brand that I couldn't have sold pipes. I had to work for brands that I loved and could live and breathe and understand and potentially was a consumer of because it made it easier for me to do a good job 100%

Rory McEntee:

I think for me, that was always the driving force, because there was no kind of kind of black line between leaving work and kind of going home. You were always on to a degree, like you didn't switch off. And I think at gym box, how they've evolved into that and taken the learning from the likes of Paddy Power and everyman cinema. It's, you know, all the crazy classes we do and all the interesting campaigns. I'm learning from other brands. I'm learning from experiences in London and I've traveled around the world. I take these ideas and bring them back to gym box, because I'm always thinking about, how can I borrow, steal, you know, craft other ideas I see in different industries and bring them into my world and marketing. So I could only do that for somewhere I've got real interest in, as opposed to, for a butter brand, for example, you know, or, you know, a cleaning brand. And you know, some great marketeers working for those, but it doesn't drive me. There's no passion, yeah. So, you know, you need to kind of have that for me to really kind of immerse yourself into the brand,

Katie:

I think so I feel exactly the same, although, yeah, I'm probably a little bit more passionate about cleaning products today than I was 20 years ago. I probably, probably could get quite passionate about cleaning products. Um, so let's map back to the key, I think the key thing that makes Rory Rory, which is this disruptive nature that you have. And what I love about gym box in particular, although I still haven't done a bloody class yet, this is gonna happen. We need to change. We talked about that five years ago. Yeah, it's happening. I promise you, it's happening. And you know what? I'm thinking, I'm gonna get the guys to record some content that we'll put on our social channels. You can watch a lot, watch me struggle. So, but what I love about the gym box marketing the brand is that disruptive nature and also how it comes through in the brand. So how important do you think that has been? Well, specifically for, for gym box, I guess, but for, I guess, the brand's equity, how you attract and gain members for everything that the brand is, and how that then influences the marketing.

Rory McEntee:

It's super interesting if you rewind just a little bit. So I think the reason gym box is the way it is is because the founder, Richard, when he had the idea for the brand, he was marketing first, so he worked in an ad agency.

Katie:

Oh, I did not know. I mean, if you I did know that, I'd forgotten, yeah. So that was 20 years

Rory McEntee:

ago, because the gym box has been around a little while now. Yeah. So he worked in New York for brands like Nike, and he saw the fitness scene over there 20 years ago. And he essentially saw drag queens on spin bikes and just crazy things happening. So he brought the concept back to London, opened gyms in like disused car parks and basements, in places you wouldn't normally find gyms. And because it was a marketing led he was a marketing led person, the marketing almost came first and then the product second, but the product was always a really good workout, but it was done in a fun way. So that's almost the the essence of the brand, and that's what's kind of held true all these years later. And I think the really interesting thing then is, as time's gone on, we talk about this brand onion that we do and have all the layers of the brand, and the core of that brand onion is our, like challenger mindset. But then around the layers you've got the product, which is all about being progressive, quality, cool, but tonally, where all the marketing comes out, is about being fearless, kind of irreverent, funny. And I think that then has led to the almost the crazy classes that essentially market themselves. I've got the easiest job in the world, because the team, we've got this amazing studio director Hannah who leads all the class development, and I've got some PR agencies, and we've got, I'll talk about where the ideas come from in a moment. We've got this amazing melting pot of classes and ideas that it makes my job become just execution to dare I say it, yeah, but from. Myself out of a job. But it is true, because so again, for anyone who doesn't know, we kind of pride ourselves on having, you know, classes from what we call holistic to sadistic. So everything under one roof. We've got class categories, yoga, aerial combat, dance, mind for mental health. We've got basically any class you can imagine, from pole dancing to aerial yoga to hit to sweat. So it allows us to jump on anything. Unlike some other great brands we talk you got Barry F 45 all these other brands, we're very single minded in what they do. We can kind of delve into whatever is going on a society and come up with new ideas. So, and that's the really exciting thing, it gives me so much more ammunition to go to market with and to play with from our marketing campaigns. Like, some of the classes are just bonkers over the years. Like I look at them and go, How did we do that? And how did we get away with it? They come from what's going on society. So, for example, years ago, when we met, I think we talked about it briefly, Brexit was the topic. You know, was it five years ago? I can't even remember now, and we had this we created, like an anger management class. But what we did was we wrapped it in we asked our members, what are the most frustration, frustrating things about being in London? And one of the things that came up was Brexit. So we wrapped this class anger management and Brexit. We put politicians faces on punching bags with bars on punch bags. We had a Theresa May sac race. We had the Jacob Rees log lift. So all just these fun little quirky bits that just kind of added a layer of, kind of just just fun and hum into your class. You come in have a really sweaty workout, but which fun, and then, so that was a great one. We did, we we look at what's going on in the world. So CBD, a couple of years ago, was coming in. We did CBD yoga, where you could actually have a patch on you and just kind of chill, relax. But, you know, we call that. We call the cannabis, which is, again, just a kind of a fun little name, which, again, did great PR. We had post covid. Dare I say it? Don't say the C word. We had digital detox when the gym reopened, because everybody had been on Zoom for a year. So you came in, you got your phone at the door, and you come in, leave it in the box, lock it up. And then we've had, on the back of the country, kind of Beyonce world coming in. We did the hoedown showdown, class line dancing. Got it that I haven't been we have just done and what we do is, every couple of months we just, we don't stand still, we just drop in new classes, new classes, new classes. And it's just an amazing tool to be able to disrupt the market, because other brands are just doing the same things, week in, week out. Whereas we've got so much new content to talk about, it's brilliant.

Katie:

Yeah, I think what sets you guys apart, and what I absolutely love about the gym box brand, is the fact that the product is the marketing. There's not many businesses that can do that. You know, the classes are the attraction. And to a certain extent, like you say, market themselves, because you're able to jump on those societal, cultural trends, things that are happening today, and you make it fun, and it makes your job, in a lot of ways, I guess, you know, a bit easier. However, I'm sure that you're involved with helping come up with the concepts for those classes, sometimes, because you're a tight knit group, and because the, I mean, it is an interesting strategy, because it's, it's different to most how, you know, you can develop the right products, but I'm guessing sometimes also the wrong ones. Yeah, so how do, how do you guys decide internally, right? Yeah, this is the these, the trends that matter to our audience, and, you know, the members that you want to attract and that you already

Rory McEntee:

have. Yeah, it's tough, because we've got a lot wrong over the years as well. You know, we've had classes that I taught would do really, really well. We've had, we've had, so before my time, there was a class called human weights, right? So it was actually people of different sizes. And, you know, small, smaller people, taller, people who had numbers on them from 67 kilo to 23 kilo, and you could come in and lift those people. Bit of fun. Yeah, you did that now you'd be absolutely slow. It was a fun idea for the time, and it was called human weight. It was great. More recently, I had an idea which was working with a PR agency, and it was looking at climate change was all in the news about three years ago, and we decided to run a class called extinction training, which is essentially a hit class, but it was tackling the different elements of climate change. So we had, you know, the melting ice caps. You could push a block, a melting ice block, on a sled. You had the wind was going to increase by a couple of knots, so you were actually running against a massive fan, nice. And then we heated up the rooms because the temperature was arising. So we thought it was a great idea. It's gonna, you know, get a lot of great press, and there's a backlash people, you know, greenwashing against climate change. And so it's, sometimes it's difficult. You think you got the. Temperature of the room, but you sometimes just don't know how people react. Now, it's very rare that happens, yeah, and I think one of the learnings we had since then is we kind of have this committee, dare I say, like kind of to look at our work. And, I mean, I'm a 42 year old white man, you know, we have classes that touch every gender, every kind of race, in the business and age. So we're looking at, you know, 18 year olds. It's kind of Gen Z. How do this kind of land with you guys? We want to get people's opinions. It isn't just, you know, a lot of white men in a room, yeah, and women, yeah. But mostly, we are white senior leaders, which is the way it is, which is the way it is, and, yeah, and we're getting there, but it's, you know, are we the right people to say these are the classes that are our target market? Who are, you know, the sweet spot of kind of 2627 year olds want to see now? So we do have to kind of rethink some of our ideas. But the great thing is, the ideas don't always come from the top down. They come from the bottom up. Good. So the ideas are coming from sales teams, receptionists who have been to Greece and seen a plate throwing party and are thinking, We should do this in the gym. And we go, yeah, why not? Let's do it. And that's the beauty. The ideas can come from anywhere. Yeah, and we and we incentivise people as well. If we use the idea, they get some money. So it isn't just kind of take, take, take, but is it? But it's a lovely it's a lovely place to be, because I think at gym, box ideas then come from left field. So that's a crazy idea. We we should never do that, but let's do it. Let's and I think we are a little bit like I always say. We ask for forgiveness, not permission. We always just push it out there and see what happens. Sometimes we get it wrong, but most of the times we get it right. Yeah, but it does help. It helps get that talk ability for the brand, which is very hard to get, on a small budget that we have, compared to some of these big brands that are out there.

Katie:

Well, let's talk about that then, because that is super interesting. And especially as a, you know, even the big brands like time stamping this we are in, I don't know what bloody year is, August 2024 I think. And you know, last year was tough for even the biggest brands out there. You know, everyone was having their marketing budgets. Car it was, you know, a scary time for many. They weren't able you marketing teams that usually had huge budgets had very little to play with, so everyone's had to become a little bit more creative. I do think it's getting better now, finally. But what does that mean for you guys, who kind of always have to really think about things? How do you get a fantastic marketing campaign off the ground when you've got smaller budgets?

Rory McEntee:

I think my budgets have got smaller as I've got more senior, in a crazy way. Yeah, I know as I get more senior, I had so much money at Paddy Power, and then it just went down and down and down. Well, look, you've got to be smarter for one and it's easy to say that a lot of people say you got to be smarter every penny counts. You got to work harder. But again, I think my view on it is trying to do stuff that hasn't been done, but that is tricky. Now, everything has probably been done in some aspect. It's how you kind of wrap it and spin it a little bit. And I think what we try and do are things that make you smile, be a little bit disruptive, not offensive. However, not everyone's going to like what you do, so I think you've got to be brave and do stuff that will kind of rattle the cage a little bit. Because if you don't, I think if you try and market to everyone, become so beige that you end up not talking to anyone and everyone, just like, meh. And I think again, in the gym world, a funny statistic, only 15% of the UK population go to a gym. What? Only 15% I promise that that's the stat. It's from some somebody more important than me, because I'm governed, about only 15% of the UK have a gym membership. So straight away, my audience is pretty small. Right out

Katie:

of that 15% probably only about 10% of them go yeah, probably go,

Rory McEntee:

yeah, exactly. Are paying their membership. And I'm not going of that. How many people are going to be a gym box type member? So actually, I'm going to alienate probably 85% of my audience anyway, so I really want to just tap into those gym box kind of members, or potential members. So we're trying to do stuff to make people smile. So that bus advert, which caused so much controversy last

Katie:

year, go on. For those that haven't seen it, let's tell us about the bus ad.

Rory McEntee:

So the bus ad, okay, so let me, let me set this up. So the bus ad was to promote our aerial classes. So again, for anyone who's known aerial class, you're suspended from a roof in a harness like aerial yoga.

Katie:

Can I tell you a very quick I mean, I shouldn't really be interested, and I promise I won't call him out, although he probably wouldn't really mind. One of my neighbors who I met down in Bournemouth, where I live, also used to live in, have a place in Notting Hill, okay? And I used to, I grew up in and around London and Notting Hill, and you know, that was where I spent my Well, youth, late teens, early 20s. And. Um, went to his house literally just off Portobello Road one night. I don't know it's his birthday, my brother's birthday. We went there, and I was like, oh, it's really cool. You do aerial yoga in your light lounge. He was like, no Katie, I hire out to a lesbian sex like club every Tuesday night. And yeah, they're gonna be here soon. I was like, Okay, can I stay?

Rory McEntee:

I'll stay. Sorry on that. Well, we actually could be next year mock class. You just give me the idea of next year, yeah. But no, so yeah, it is not quite like that

Unknown:

envision, yeah. So we

Rory McEntee:

had this idea. We wanted to kind of promote the aerial classes. We had the idea of trying to advertise from somewhere looking down, from like somewhere high up looking down. So the idea came, would we advertise on top of a London bus? Now we said it was a media first for some of your slightly older audience that might remember the economist back in the I think was in the 80s. But again, as I said, nothing's ever brand new, right? We take, you know, liberties a little bit. So we had this great line, which said, If you're reading this, you're a natural gym box aerial class is now available. So the idea was, you're looking down, you see this advert. And we said, look, let's just run on a couple of busses. Ran it by the boss. We mocked it up just to show the boss. He thought the idea was great. Let's do it. Looked at the option with our media agency, and they said you can't advertise on top of London busses, which was a surprise to me. I thought you could, because obviously it happened before. Turns out you can no longer do it. It's not it's not an option. We had this great idea. It was around the time as well, when all the CGI was coming out, the Maybelline eyelashes on the tube, Adidas had done one around the world cup. So we just thought, let's just jump on this trend of fake ads going out. So we pushed the advert out as if it was real. Now I think the reason it got so much controversy was probably because no one knew if it was real or wasn't real, whereas I think some of the CGI stuff, you knew pretty quickly that it wasn't, and we were. We kind of needed to grease the wheels a little bit, as I say, to kind of get the message out there. We were sharing it as if it was real. And the marketing rule went mad. It just went, how dare they? They lying to us. It didn't happen. We got some great PR for the first four days. And then when people then inquired with TfL and global and different media agencies and said it wasn't real, there was this massive backlash to gym box around just, you know, faking their ads. Now, I loved it. I was getting for about 250 pounds, the most coverage we'd ever received, and actually, again, to my earlier point, most people wouldn't be gym box members anyway, so we were just getting our brand out there, not, I don't think in a negative way. I think, I think it was a little bit controversial, but it was kind of a fun piece. And probably of all the campaigns last year called the fake out, it was one of the most popular, certainly in terms of coverage, which I thought, you know, for us as a disruptive brand, yeah, it's like, it's great, it's great. And again, we didn't in this world again where everybody was CGI, ours had a very human element to it, with our copywriter come up to the line, we had our graphic designer mock it up. So it was all done in house, and we didn't use any kind of AI or chatgpt or anything like that. So we were quite proud of the advert, even though probably me personally, got somewhat attacked and called out on LinkedIn and social media. But you know what? People don't know your objectives. And if you push your objectives and you get what you want, aerial classes went through the roof. Yeah, for us, there through the roof. We had so many inquiries. Searched for gym box aerial, so it did the job, yeah, for for not a lot of money.

Katie:

Why do you think it upset people so much? All right, honest

Rory McEntee:

truth is, most people who were negative about it were media agencies.

Katie:

Yeah, that's what I was gonna guess. Yeah,

Rory McEntee:

a lot of media agencies felt, you know, it was CGI was going everywhere they were fake at a home going up. My view is, you know, they're missing out on the share of the pie. And wanted to kind of, cause they hide behind truth and, you know, being authentic and everything else, yeah, whatever else, it's a different world. The younger generation that are my target audience at 2627 year olds were loving it, yeah. So it was brilliant. Was brilliant, and it became a piece of content in itself, yeah. So the ad wasn't the printed ad on the bus, it was the picture of the bus with the ad, which was faked, yeah. And, you know, it went viral, and people loved it. So I think the media really disliked it, and they caused a lot of stir. Got a few few arguments with a few people online are better, but like, you know what you got to do, what you got to do for your brand, right?

Katie:

Yeah, and it goes back to that exact thing that you were saying of bravery. Like you guys are brave enough to do something different, actually, when it comes to, you know, fake ads, it was developed in a very human way with people. Behind the strategy, developing the content, not even using some of the AI tools. So why the hell not?

Rory McEntee:

Yeah, this is it. And I do, I do strongly believe people ask me, would you do it again, Rory? And I'm like, Was it real? Was it not? Was it what got people? They weren't sure, yeah, but I think that was probably why it got so much success. If it didn't, if people knew it was fake, it wouldn't have got the coverage it got. So I think you have to be brave when you do those kind of campaigns, yeah. And I think one of my learnings from that is not to take any criticism too personally. Because I think for a time, people were really, you know, you know, people just, you know, asking you and, yeah, whatever you kind of got guys Rory did, like, no one died. Yeah, like, does adverts out there for like, you know, vaping and alcohol and fast food going around, and they're causing way bigger issues that the media agencies love having on their billboards and will take their money, but for a fake little advert that's caused no no one any harm and is trying to help people stay fit exactly, we're promoting health and fitness. So anyway, love to do fake your ads, guys. I love

Katie:

it honestly. And I just love the, well, the innovation that sits behind that whole you know, how you guys came up with the idea what you did? I think it's brilliant. We've done some other pretty cool campaigns as well. So whilst we're talking about different cool things, yeah,

Rory McEntee:

we know what we always again, we tried to do things differently. So even one of my other recent favorite ones was we did a Google kind of PPC advert campaign. Yes, and I look there's brand and performance marketing. I love brand. I've got to do performance. We've all got to drive those short term sales and do our spikes and get our, you know, acquisition. But it's boring.

Katie:

Yeah, it's not brand. Is the fun part of marketing often, isn't it? Like, especially when you've got a brand like gym box, where you've got this fantastic and fun Yeah, so give

Rory McEntee:

me an opportunity. Okay, if we're going to do performance marketing, how do I make that gym box? How do I do something a little bit different? So how do you so what we we did on that one was we created a, I guess you'd call it competitor activity campaign. So I'm just a caveat on this, because I'm quite vocal on people who use competitors as a competitive advantage and call out competitors like the Burger King McDonald's, which I think is a cool way of doing it, where Don't be a clown, all that sort of stuff. But there's a lot of brands out. There's a bit of a trend now on promoting your competitors in your brand. But I, I'm not a huge fan of this. However, we tried to do it differently. So rather than overtly promoting our competitors, what would happen was, if somebody searched for one of our competitors on Google, so turd space gym near me, or class pass, what we were doing is we were serving him up with a gym box advert. So if you search turd space, you would say, Why settle for turd be number one at gym box? Love that with a bit of fun class pass we said, you know, never skip a class at gym box. So just kind of clever bits of copy that related to those adverts. And it was a bit of a pure stunt. The Performance bit was going to cost us a bit of money, because you're having to bid a lot. Having to bid a lot, but it was a pure stunt. Yeah, it got a huge amount of talkability. People were sharing it. And this one wasn't fake. It was real. So actually, I wanted to make sure that people were searching for this, if they're seeing it from a pure point of view, then they searched for it that they were then getting served it to create that shareability and talkability, yeah. And again, it was one that just people loved, because I hadn't been seen, done, heard often in my time, and it was just a really clever way of just promoting the brand in a kind of surprising way, and almost kind of hijacking people's kind of Google feeds. So there's a lot of fun the bit, though, was when you had the R competitors coming out of saying, How dare they That's so cheap, yeah. But again, it's just a bit of fun,

Katie:

but let's be honest, like, how many times I can't remember what I Googled yesterday, but this happened. This actually happened, and I didn't even plan for it, but I searched something, and the competitor, I can't remember what a bloody search for, but I searched something, and you know, one of their leading competitors comes up first, so they're bidding, so they're doing it without, like, that's a shit way of doing, yeah, it's

Rory McEntee:

such a shit way. It's so boring. And then you just, yeah, I

Katie:

look at that, and I'm like, I don't want to fucking buy from you now, yeah, I want to find the guy I'm searching for, these guys, and it puts me off their brand. But what you did, again, going back to the ethos of your brand is made it fun, made it funny, you made it a play on words. Met like you, and then you're like, Oh no, that's quite I've got respect for them. Yeah, it's a very you. It's you're doing the same thing, but you're doing it in a much smarter, more fun way. And that's

Rory McEntee:

going back to that brown onion I spoke about the beginning. Everything we do comes back to challenger brand being disruptive. It would be my job would be so much easier if we were not that brand, because we would just get stuff out, we would be a lot easier. Nine out of 10 ideas don't make the light of day because we challenge ourselves. It's got to feel on brand. We can't just serve out a paid media ad or a Google ad, or unless I have that gym box. Tone and fun, and that's why, with the team, we're always pushing the team to come up with new ideas, because otherwise we'll just become the same as everybody else. So we always kind of drive new thinking and new ideas.

Katie:

Yeah, well, that's actually gonna be my next question, and I told you I was gonna go way off topic today with regards to, well, we're not off topic because it's all about marketing innovation, but how do you drive that culturally across the business? Because I think it's all well and good to, you know, all of us as businesses, we want to be seen as being innovative as you know, being out there, be it, you know, being that well, not, maybe not all, but a lot certainly. You know, I do, and I think we've done a pretty good job of challenging the norms of having a strong tone of voice. But how do you develop that culturally within the business, to make sure that what you're putting out is a true representation of you know what? What's happening within?

Rory McEntee:

Do you know what? It goes back to hiring the right people, first of all. And I think again, I know I keep banging on this, our brown onion influences everything we do. So even in our job advert, it's got that gym box tone. So the people then that are applying are people that buy into that kind of fun brand that you you can tell when they come in for interviews. But actually, the people then that come in on the back of that advert are there, I say people who they're a bit more quirky, but different, a bit unique. So we're getting people, I like to get people in that are who love the London life, who are out experiencing London, seeing crazy things, because they're the people then will have those ideas. They'll say, Rory, I was out on Friday night at this nightclub, and you'll never guess what I saw. This DJ was doing this with a whatever. And we go, right, can we take some of those ideas and ride in the gym box. So it's people who are out there getting experiences and taken to the gym, but it's about kind of empowering them as well. Because I've been in jobs. I'm sure you have in the past, we have ideas, and you bring them to your boss, and you're, you know, it's like head against a brick wall, and then when you have that next good idea, you don't come to them if you don't want that rejection again. And I think as a brand, we're very good at letting ideas kind of grow and say to people, okay, if that's something you think's gonna work. Sometimes maybe I'll agree. Maybe I'll say, I'm not sure that's quite right, but let's go with it and see what happens, and give them a bit of rope to try and improve the concept. Or, by the way, I'm not talking about a fake bus ad. It's sometimes it's just a simple idea from a little bit of paid media, or a small class idea we've done. One of the girls today just came up with a class to do, kind of the whole Bratz summer spin class. We're going to have the room green. And I just said, Yeah, let's do it like, why not? Let's just turn it around in two days. Just just a fun team spin class. So I think you need to let people have an idea, follow through and see it. But I think the the big thing with my team, which, again, I go back to that mantra around asking for forgiveness and that permission is even sometimes, if I'm not around, and I think there's a topical, reactive idea, I'm almost encouraging them to do it. If it doesn't work. I'm not going to kind of slap their hands and say, I almost commend them for trying. If it's failed, like you've, you know, you did it quickly. You had to go, let's move on to the next idea, because then you'll just breed that culture where you want to keep coming up with ideas. Otherwise, if you, if you, if they do the idea it doesn't work, and you say, Guys, you really shouldn't have done that without you end up to becoming a bottleneck. Yeah, you end up becoming a bottleneck. No, it's a little bit easier for a brand, gym box, where we know we've got this culture, we'll push it out, not for everybody. Some brands out there that might struggle to allow that culture to cultivate. But my advice would be, try it. You never know what ideas you could get. Yeah,

Katie:

I love that, that your ability to enable everyone within the business to generate ideas, try things, not worry about it if it fucks up or it doesn't deliver what you thought it was. I think that is an absolute game changer, especially in today's world. It really

Rory McEntee:

is. And there's some of my teams I've been at gym box now almost seven years, and some of my guys have moved on. And it's great. And you encourage people to when they when they kind of get and they grow and they move. It's brilliant. And I remember one of the girls, Jess, used to work with me when she first came in, she came from the sales team in the club, full of ideas, and now she's, you know, head of marketing from fitness app like she has just grown grown, grown and grown. Now I'm not going to take any credit. All I did was kind of just say, just do what you want to do and do. And she and she took the reins and she did that. But if you're a leader or a manager and you're trying to, you know, clip those wings, people like Jess just wouldn't get to where she is. Now, it's really important just to let people, you know, make their mistakes but grow as well. Yeah,

Katie:

guide them to a certain extent, but let them, let them do what they want to do. Like, I think that's we get so hammed in or hemmed in, whatever they were, yeah, so hemmed in by, you know, trying to deliver certain things. Things and not being able to contribute and have and that's what's great about smaller businesses. Like, you know, I've worked in huge, huge corporations with offices all around the world, and, you know, 1000s, if not sometimes, you know, hundreds of 1000s of staff, if you look at the whole global organisation, but all the way down to now, you know, I've got a team of just under 10 people like, you know, we can, you know, I'm always encouraging the staff to do extra, to try new things, to look at new platforms like that's that's how we grow and operate as a business. Because if we don't, then we become stagnant, and just like everyone else

Rory McEntee:

you really do, and you know what, we drive everybody in gym box mad like you're a non marketing team, because the stuff we do, like we had one of our girls a few weeks ago. You remember? Yes, oh my

Katie:

God, I didn't know at this time, my brother told me, I definitely feel like a lot more men.

Rory McEntee:

Maybe they do. I don't know. But anyway, obviously she went viral. And yeah, anyway, what am I? What am I? What am I? Girls messaged me. I wasn't even in the office. She messaged me, and she cut out a picture of this girl, and she said, Oh, do you mind if I stick these all around the changing rooms on the taps and the water coolers, so it looks like, oh and the soap dispenser. So when you push the soap dispenser, the soap spits out. And I just went, Okay, love that

Unknown:

idea. What a clever Yeah,

Rory McEntee:

really clever. Put we put it in some of the changing rooms. It went pretty viral. People sharing, going, Oh my God. Then I had the ops manager calling the CEO, going, who's done all this? And then changing rooms and again, just a little bit of fun, up and down. Cost Nothing again. Just, just, just live your brand. Let people grow. That's just a bit of fun at the end of the day. It's marketing, right? We're not trying to, you know, cure cancer, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, just, there's bigger things going on, like, some of the things going on the world right now. Just have a bit of fun. Yeah?

Katie:

Let people grow. Yeah. I really like what, again, you're going back to there, is you wouldn't necessarily think that's a marketing tactic. It's a bit gorilla esque, isn't it, to a certain extent that you're doing something in a place where you wouldn't expect it to necessarily be a marketing tactic, but it is, because the world we live in now is so viral. Someone has to do is film it and tag jimbox, then off you go. You're you're getting some great content, and you're making people laugh, and it's happy and fun, and, yeah, it's great. I love that you. I love that you. I mean, that's one of the other things you know. I guess I knew that you guys did it, but that we've really spoken about today is the importance of jumping on cultural trends. Now, you're really making me think about how we're not doing it enough. But I'm always saying to the team, you know, whatever's going on in the world, like, Yeah, we don't do so much email marketing now, but putting that as the subject in a header. Yeah, obviously everyone's been doing the Olympics, so doing stuff around, going for gold, or whatever it might be like playing in it's because everyone's everyone's there. They want to know about it. You know, one of the best campaigns we ever did for art for ourselves at street, really, really basic, but so clever. And I can't even claim it as my own, one of my fabulous team members at the time she's left me now was, it was a campaign that went from me. So we do all of our marketing as you know, human to human. So we don't do newsletters from from the business. We do stuff from me. Okay, it's like, now, I obviously used to see them, but I didn't necessarily write every single email that went out. So this is one that Nicole wrote. And yeah, shout out to Nicole Wilson. So Nicole did. It was on Valentine's Day. We sent this, and it was, I've broken up with my partner. Was the title of life, and it was like, agency, partner, if you're looking for a new agency, then we got like, 4050, meeting requests off the back of what I mean, email marketing is a bit harder nowadays, but we, like, you know, have some fun. Like, some people did respond and they were like, This is really tacky. Yeah, we don't like it, fine. You're probably gonna never work with us anyway. You're not right for us. We've got personality. This is how we show up. If you don't like it, we are not, you're definitely not going to get on with me as my client, because that's

Rory McEntee:

how, yeah, yeah. These are my values. And this, yeah, we do the business. And actually, yeah, we know that fungal to work. Yeah,

Katie:

exactly. So I love that. I really love you're really making me think, and I hope everyone listening or watching as well about the importance of jumping on those cultural trends and things that are going on in the world. And

Rory McEntee:

you know what? If we do that in two ways, and again, for anyone listening, there's the plan versions we do. So you know, you talked about the Olympics earlier on, so we look ahead of the calendar, what's coming up the Olympics. So we did two classes this year. We did speed walking, we have on the treadmill, you can just speed walk. And we did break dancing called we did a breaking class, because breakdancing was in the Olympic for the first time. Yes, which was very funny with the Australian girl, Ray Gun. Did you see her? No, she's going viral for all the wrong reasons. Oh no. Australian girl Google after oh, maybe

Unknown:

she was,

Rory McEntee:

oh God, kangaroo and stuff. All very funny. But so we looked at that and you. Plan ahead, and you go, Olympics are coming. How do we do something that's relevant and create talkability? And that's how we do it. But the ones that tend to work even better are like those reactive ones where we come up, like the hot tool girl, where, again, the idea just comes into one's head, and we go, should we do it? Yeah, let's get it out today, and we turn them around so quickly, almost a point. We don't have time to think about it too much. Yeah, we did one recently for Glastonbury where one of the girls just couldn't get a ticket. She's an inspiring musician. She couldn't get a ticket, so she decided to put on a glasto box in gym box. So she just said, Oh, can I? Can I put on? So we got a band, and we put them in the boxing ring on a Friday night for glass me weekend, we got a band. She hired a band for not a lot of money. We got beaver tan in. They gave away some beers. We did some fun games. And again, people just coming in. We didn't promote it. People just came in to the gym and there was a band playing in the ring. We called a glass of box. Had some beer. So again, don't have a beer license. Just sold beer. But I think so we just gave it away. I think if you give it away, you don't get in trouble. But, and, yeah, it was just great thing. Everybody was sharing it. People were going, oh my god, gym box. Are doing Glassdoor box. And just a reactive thing that we turned around in two days. Yeah, crazy. And they're the bits like your email that you just, you never know, yeah, last minute, last minute.com. Just try something, see what happens. It's interesting,

Katie:

isn't it, though, because we though, because we worry in marketing so much about planning, you know, we we definitely don't do one year plans anymore. We know some key things that coming up, you know, events that we're doing, mad fest, for instance, yeah, but often, you know, the the coolest and the most fun things we do, someone we could just say on a Monday morning meeting or, like, or just randomly say, Oh, I saw this. I think we should jump on it. And those are the things that go viral. Yeah,

Rory McEntee:

they're the ones. Because you, I think you can overthink some of the bigger stuff. And, okay, of course, you You mad fest January for the gym, world's big. Yeah, you've got to plan those ones in Yeah, but it's those little spikes and those little cherries throughout the year. They're the ones that make as much of a difference you can plan for them, because you don't know what's going to happen.

Katie:

No, you don't. You have no idea how I was going to say my one of my questions was actually going to be, do you, do you in any way kind of plan or brainstorm those ideas? When someone comes to you, do you just go, Fuck it here, let's just do it. Or do you try to cultivate that? Or do you tell the team like we want you to, you know, have a think about these things. Or, does it? Is it just ingrained now in the business,

Rory McEntee:

you know, it varies a little bit. I think as the team grows and gets more confident, they're able to take an idea and build it. But it takes, it took a lot of time to so, you know, I go back to the brown onion. With the brand onion, we then develop these kind of five brand values. And, you know, we have, you know, sweats of details. Get stuck in. Don't be a dick. Have a giggle, and anything goes. There are kind of five brand values. And as people come into the business, they learn what they mean, and they have a meaning. As a, you know, from a marketing point of view, what does don't be a dick mean for marketing. Don't offend people. Don't be stupid. Yes, have a giggle, you know, make them smile. Do marketing like, you know, put this on a few people's faces. Sweat the details. Make sure we've nailed, you know, that media or nail the paid social so the team learned those values quite early on, and hopefully they see that from me day to day, about kind of sweating those kind of details and the value. So when those ideas come I think it's just a natural the guys kind of know they've been in there, like they're on they're on the kind of the plane or on the rocket ship. They know where we're going with this, and they know where to push it and not to push it. But that takes a little bit of time. And as people first come in, they might come in, they might come to me and go, have I crossed the line? Is this too far? Look, sometimes I don't know, yeah, you know, sometimes you go, you know what? I think that. I think that's good, but fuck, it's a bit punchy, isn't it? What are you two? And so there's sometimes an element of that, like, I'm not gonna let the guys go off and go crazy and cause, you know, some terrible, pure disaster, don't

Katie:

be a dick. Bit play back into the value. Everything

Rory McEntee:

comes back in. So whilst on the outside, people think gym box, do all these kind of wacky, crazy one off pieces like the bus or Google or whatever, it all layers up to that anything goes. Kind of model that gym box is a place where we have a giggle, but we're not being don't be a dick. It's all built on the strategies, but on the outside it looks a little bit kind of gung ho and and sporadic, but there is a kind of strategy behind it all. And I think the team get that, and I think as they kind of grow and learn, like if I go away for a couple of weeks, I trust them to, to not make mistakes, but they have. We've got a great support system. Mark, my CEO. He loves marketing. He's kind of, you know, he, he we got finance meetings, marketing meetings, you know, operations meetings, marketing meetings. He's, you know, they always overrun because he, like anyone, loves talking about it, but you know, he's there to guide the team as. Well, when I'm not around, but there's a real culture of, you know what guys you are, you are a target audience. You know what makes people tick? And I trust them completely.

Katie:

You have to. You have to. I love that, and I really adore how you live and breathe your values. Because I think businesses forget, I mean, I've had a couple of clients who don't have values, and I'm like, How can you not? I'm a tiny business, and, you know, I hope that we live in fact, to the point we're now putting them in all of our pitch decks to clients, so that they're aware of this is us. This is what this means to work with us. If you don't like them, then don't work with us. And we truly do, you know, live by them. We onboarded two new staff yesterday, and I took them through the values. It's, it's super, super important. I think everything that you do, internally and externally, should map back to your values. They have to, they have to truly represent you. And I think in order to attract customers and attract good staff, you've got to, you've got to live your values. So it's great to hear that you guys, actually? No, you you really need to. You

Rory McEntee:

really need to. I think a lot of businesses have all the values, but sometimes you just need to articulate them and put them down and just kind of go, right, that's what they mean. Oh, I get that. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're doing all the time anyway.

Katie:

Talk about them, yeah. Talk about shove them on the wall. Do Yeah? I mean, there's more than just shoving them on the wall, isn't there. But because you have got to, you've got to show how to live them and explain them and actually show what it means. But yeah, you do make them visual. Rory, one last question. So we've talked a lot about disruption in marketing, how to how that really helps drive innovation. What I want to know from you is for our lovely listeners, if they're thinking about, how can I, how can I really make a difference? And they want to kind of take on some of the advice and the things that we've talked about today. What the what should they do? Yeah, let's say it's a CMO or a marketeer listening, and they they're like, Yes, I love this. I really want to do it, but I just think I'm going to get some fight back from the business. What would you advise them? Every business is different.

Rory McEntee:

There's businesses that are a little bit more are a little bit more straight laced. Businesses are a bit more disruptive. But I think marketing should always create a feeling right to somebody. So whether that feeling makes you nostalgic or happy, sad, angry, whatever that might be, marketing was always going to create that emotion, those feels you get from marketing. So I think if you're a CMO trying to push something to, you know, your board, or see senior leadership team, you've got to just kind of back yourself to say, look, we're trying to create something, you know, to move the dial here. And like, I know it's not overly tangible, but you've just got to fight your corner and just kind of live and kind of, you know, die by your decisions. You're not going to get them all right. But I think just just show that passion and just show that feeling that you have as a market here, I think if you can show that, you can get your CEO, your leadership team, to do that, and ultimately your customers will get that feeling as well. So you've got to just push that feeling, give it to everyone,

Katie:

create the feels. There we go. What a way to end? Rory. Thank you so much for coming on. I really want to fist pump you. Thank you so much for joining guys. If you love the episode, please do go and connect with Rory on LinkedIn. He's there. We're all on LinkedIn. And also connect with me too. And yeah, there'll be I'll pop a few links into some of the cool classes that you guys are doing, and obviously you can go and check out inbox as well.