CASE STUDY

Daley Fitness x Virgin Media

How a pro-bono online fitness series kept a gym afloat and landed in four million homes
Find out more

Client

Daley Fitness

Sector

Healthcare

Services provided

Video Production

The Situation

At the start of lockdown, PLMR began a project with Olympic legend Daley Thompson CBE to keep the nation mentally and physically healthy in these difficult circumstances. The challenge we were presented with was that like other gyms, Daley Fitness, run by the double Olympic gold medallist, faced closure for months because of lockdown. This left the trainers without any income and the members of the gym without their trainers. As a small business in West London, Daley Fitness was concerned about the impact of lockdown on not just themselves but also on people across the country whose routines were suddenly disrupted.

What we did

After discussions with Daley Thompson about his desire to run the classes, and the digital and PR support PLMR could offer, the project was delivered pro bono as part of PLMR’s efforts to make a positive difference, and we assessed that a good outcome for the project was simply one that meant the classes had helped people to improve their fitness and general physical and mental health. PLMR were responsible for filming, edited, streaming, and promoting the classes.

One of the main challenges was ensuring that Daley Fitness x PLMR was different to the many other online fitness classes emerging and offered something unique. Because of this, the classes were designed to be a health class that was accessible to all, with classes at beginner, intermediate, and advanced level in every stream. This set the Daley Fitness exercise classes apart from competitors who were more focused on a single level. Particularly for older people, our classes offered an easy way to exercise without putting themselves under too much strain. It also offered the opportunity for people to aim for something, being able to work themselves up to trying exercises from the intermediate section and eventually moving on to advanced.

The Result

In a creative effort to ensure the classes were available to as many people as possible, PLMR streamed them as-live on several channels at once including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube at 12pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We promoted the classes on our channels and from Daley Thompson’s own Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as creating shareable infographics. To further promote the classes in a creative way, we fielded questions and requests for advice from social media for Daley Thompson to answer, delighting his many fans across the world. The project was incredibly successful, achieving great feedback from users, media coverage and over 150,000 views across all platforms.

Ultimately the enormous success led to Virgin Media buying Daley Fitness classes, with them now being broadcast every weekday on channel 997, a dedicated ‘Get Moving’ channel created just for Daley Fitness.  From its launch, Daley Fitness became the number one video series on the Virgin On-Demand platform in their COVID-19 category. This result proves just how effective the PLMR x Daley Fitness project was, having started pro-bono as an idea to help people cope with the physical and mental struggles of lockdown and use the skills of trainers who would otherwise be sitting idle, it was picked up by a major media broadcaster and now is accessible to millions of people across the UK.

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PLMR’s crisis communications experience is second to none, and includes pre-emptive and reactive work across traditional and social media channels. We work with a range of organisations to offer critical communication support when they are faced with difficult and challenging scenarios.