In an effort to get us Swedes to exercise more, Friskis&Svettis wanted to target those who didn’t follow the fitness trend! The solution was an app for people who hate to exercise. Together with their instructors and a mental coach, we could build an app that would help even the most reluctant, unwilling and lazy people to get up and start working out.
Are you one of those people who thinks you SHOULD exercise… But you never really get to the point, and it’s almost impossible to put on those trainers and go to the gym. We feel you! It’s actually a psychological game, where you need to teach your body (and mind) to get used to exercising. This is an insight that Friskis&Svettis and Åkestam.Holst did, and approached us with a concept: help people who hate exercising, with a tool that let you start out easy, and build up the habit to regularly exercise.
The solution became a mobile app where you have your own personal trainer and mental coach in your pocket for the first 12 workouts, spread out over a month. It’s a way to ease into the mindset, guided by professionals, but completely free! Much in compliance with the philosophy of Friskis&Svettis - to care about the common health of the Swedish citizens, not just for profit. We think thats a great thing!
The app consists of workouts, that are scheduled automatically, and during the coming month it would gradually step up in intensity. You can choose between three different instructors, all with their own style of exercising. We built a custom tool for guiding you through an exercise, compiled by different tasks and routines, complete with photos of the different steps and positions, that we shot together with highly skilled personal trainers.
Throughout the whole experience there is a mental coach, explaining to you what is happening in your body - always encouraging you to keep going. He would even foresee that you might need some time to recover from your exercise, and wouldn’t judge you if you postponed the workout at times. After each workout you get a summary of where you are, and whats the next step - so that your brain is always one step ahead of your body. The app becomes like that Microsoft Word Assistant paperclip, except this guy is a bit less… Annoying.
The app was released for both Android and iOS mobile devices, encouraging users that there is no need for anything else than your phone to actually do your workout. No weights or advanced machines… Just your guns!
To promote the app, and maybe get a few pioneers on board, we built an online campaign, where we published hundreds of ads that were posted on Blocket (the Swedish version of Craigslist). The ads that were published contained training equipment, that the seller promoted as “hardly used” or “not even unpacked” - meaning that they gave up before even trying. We gave them an incentive to take down the ad, and keep the equipment, by offering them a custom Friskis&Svettis wear, and a free membership at the Friskis&Svettis gym. Through a web-service the seller could remove the ad straight from our campaign-site, and by connecting through the Blocket API we could automatically detect that the ad was actually removed. Now we knew that this person actually would reconsider and might actually use that piece of equipment for getting back on track with their exercise. Fingers crossed!
The app has been successful and was #1 in the swedish top list of App Store during the first weeks. The campaign was awarded first place in the category “Creativity and innovation” at the Swedish award-show Guldnyckeln.
We work with a wide range of digital products and services, from intricate brand & company websites to hi-fi technical innovations, always executed to the highest of standards. Do you feel inspired? Drop us a line and lets get talking about how we can help you transform your ideas into reality.
Contact us