Peloton’s Aggressive Holiday Push Features Dueling Perspectives, and 2 Queen Covers

The new work from creative shop Mekanism features a new strategy for Peloton: Instead of product education, the company is using two spots to continue a narrative story while also showing the love that spouses can each have for the Peloton bike, even if just one of them will be receiving it as a gift.

“If you think about Peloton over the last few years, we started tracking awareness two and a half years ago, and we were at zero percent,” said Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, svp of brand marketing for Peloton. “Fast forward a few years later—we’re now at 50 percent among our target. We also created a category, so we really needed to explain what Peloton was through our advertising.”

Tisch Blodgett continued: “We’re at a point where the majority of people know what Peloton is, but now we need to take them one step further. One of the challenges at this time of year, the holidays, nobody thinks about gifting exercise equipment as a holiday gift. You think about gifting somebody a diet or giving somebody a Thighmaster, you would never do that as a holiday gift. Where we are now, we hear from our members, that people are actually asking for this as a gift.”

By creating a two-part campaign, which is the biggest push yet for the company, with a continuous narrative, Peloton hopes to not only show that consumers are excited to receive a Peloton bike as a gift but that more than one member of a household will likely be using said bike.

“Having two different spots is definitely new for us and a shift in strategy,” Tisch Blodgett said. “In TV, there will be moments where we’ll show them back to back or at least in the same segment. If you’re watching an NFL game, maybe you’ll see one at the beginning and one at the end of the game.”

The holiday campaign is fully integrated. Peloton worked with Horizon Media on the media strategy around the work.

As for the two Queen covers, “music is a really key part of our brand experience,” Tisch Blodgett said. “It’s a big part of the experience on the bike. As a result, we have it play a big part in our advertising as well.”