David Lloyd Clubs: A tale of taking the high road - premiumisation in the midst of a category price war

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2024

Over seven years, David Lloyd Clubs pursued a strategy to reinforce its premium positioning and pricing against the category trend of growth in low-cost gyms. The role for communications was to change perceptions of the breadth of club services and increase consideration, leading to growth in members and revenue per member. This case describes multiple phases from establishing new data foundations to demonstrating a hybrid brand- response model, which helped the company recover from Covid’s impact and enjoy long-term brand growth and enhanced pricing power. Econometrics estimates that between 2017 and 2023, these activities generated £137m of incremental revenue.

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Client Statement

Andrea Dearden, Marketing Director, David Lloyd Clubs

Evolving our marketing efforts to focus on both short term acquisition and long term brand building has totally step changed the role and perceptions of marketing within our business. It has also shaped the blueprint for how we grow our brand as we enter international markets and created a sense of pride across the marketing team from being a driving force in our recent success.

The relentless focus on data and measurement means we are able to elevate conversations around marketing investment to how they contribute to in year targets and longer-term growth. While using tools such as econometric modelling and the scenario planner enable informed discussions around the potential for growth through additional marketing spend as well as opportunities to tailor activities locally to meet specific club and regional goals. Having this level of understanding our fingertips has also changed the way we work across the Marketing team both in how we combine data and research to inform decision making, and how we review and assess our work against the goals

In parallel having a disruptive campaign platform has really helped position us away from the traditional gym sector and into a broader fitness, wellness and lifestyle space which in-turn increases the value members place on membership and the role they see our clubs playing in their lives. But it doesn’t stop with members. Our business was born on a disruptive concept to create a high quality, family friendly fitness destinations, which didn’t really exist in the UK at the time, and as we have found presenting our clubs in a differentiated way through our marketing campaigns has really ignited this disruptive spirit through our teams from the way we develop our products to how we serve our members in club.

These are all aspects of what make membership at David Lloyd Clubs special and how we help our members and team members elevate their everyday.