24 Hour Fitness: Exercise Your Happy

How do you sell people on a gym known for never closing when the pandemic forced sporadic and long-term closures? That’s the question 24 Hour Fitness struggled with from March 2020 on. In the aftermath of nationwide lockdown requirements, the company couldn’t sustain 24-hour operations and needed to sell existing clientele on a gym that kept more regular hours. With the changing attitudes towards fitness among their core millennial audience—a desire for overall wellness and an acceptance of all body types—the old tactic of selling weight loss wouldn’t cut it in 2022. 24 Hour Fitness collaborated with Ten35 design agency in search of something fresh and unique to help them stand out and pull new and lapsed clients (back) in. Enter endorfriends. These cute, colorful depictions of the endorphins naturally created by exercise encourage customers to hit the gym for a new reason: To feel good. One big family of Endorphins, representing Strength, Endurance and Mindfulness, rushing around in your head, cheering you on and pushing you to that glowy, smiley feeling of a successful workout. Ten35 created three flagship videos to introduce the endorfriends to viewers, integrating them into different exercise routines, and I helped build and new animations from scratch expanding upon the initial animations with my own fully rigged and animated characters. The endorfriends provided 24 Hour Fitness with a new framework for approaching fitness and membership, allowing the company to woo its largely-millennial target demographic with the promise of a welcoming, low-pressure environment.