RTO+P Takes Out Its Frustration with a Crumbling, Dystopic Society at the Gym

By Patrick Coffee 

This week, Philadelphia’s RTO+P answers a seemingly unanswerable question: what if Hunger Games took place in your local post-apocalyptic winner-take-all-and-everyone-else-dies gym?!

The shop, which won creative duties for the everyman fitness brand back in 2012, sees a natural connection between the series’ fight-to-the-death premise and the “Gymtimidation” campaign focused on the fact that OTHER exercise facility businesses are filled with gym rat bros and their assorted aggressive grunts.

Carrie isn’t here to make friends. She just wants to do a few minutes of light walking on a treadmill.

Well, they are a gym chain. But we get it.

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Now for some meaningless trivia: “Dimitri” is played by Robert Oberst, a professional strongman. Last year VICE did a profile of the guy for its Munchies series, and we learned that he eats an astounding 15-20,000 calories every day. He’s pretty much the world’s least likely Planet Fitness customer, but he will read your YouTube comments. And in case you doubted the client’s commitment to its stated principles, a California woman recently won media attention after irritating and intimidating many fellow Planet Fitness regulars by showing a little too much of her well-toned body.

The ad above was created primarily for the cinema, and it will air “before the trailers of all PG-13 rated movies starting November 20” in National CineMedia and Screenvision theaters across the country.

Agency President/CCO Steve Red says RTO+P chose to “take the drama up several notches” for this spot due to its cinematic nature, and the client’s VP of marketing Jamie Medeiros adds, “In our advertising, we continue to portray how many people feel intimidated and uncomfortable when they walk into a typical gym, and how you won’t find that at Planet Fitness.”

Dimitri doesn’t go to a typical gym either. He goes to one with a really nice bathroom.

Credits

Chief Creative Officer: Steve Red
Executive Creative Director: Steve O’Connell
Creative Director: Ari Garber
Associate Creative Director: Mark Garman
Senior Art Director: Jeremy Gilberto
Copywriter: Jordan Breindel
Producer: Joe Mosca
Social Strategy: Jenny Marder
Digital Strategy: Uri Weingarten
Account Executive(s): Jamie Thomas, Chelsea Dubin

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