Oh America, the land of the free and home of the brave, you really do never cease to surprise the world, do ya? You know as neighbours, you’re pretty sucky and if anything, hypocritical. To give context to my rage, in today’s episode of let’s-make-fun-of-someone’s-insecurities-and-call-it-marketing we feature American gym “Anytime fitness” sending its customers a “be comfortable in your skin” promotional email.
Only the email was neither comforting nor promotional.
The email that was sent by a franchise owner from the gym’s Manchester Connecticut location, was intended to motivate people to get into shape for the summer. The email outraged Mora Reinka, a member of the gym. Mora decided to tweet about how body-shaming the email was and a rather sorry attempt at humour.
This is truly rich coming from a nation that hyper advertises Mcdonald’s as the food of the gods and then make people hit the gym where trainers are out there to make you feel you’re nothing but an entity of mass.
Well, this is how I look at it. First things first, this franchise of Anytime fitness’ got a shitty copywriter. What’s the need for all that grabbing and pinching buddy? Didn’t you guys get enough of that with Trump. Jeez.
Secondly people need to stop associating comedy with making fun of people’s insecurities. A gym is a place where people can LITERALLY go to shed those excess kilos, why then would you make your customers feel like total losers? Screw everything, don’t you know how to run a business?
For all those who thought that the message was not offensive and was a way of motivating the customer by using reverse psychology, please remind me where did you collect your shrink degree from? The school of internet?
If anything this is playground bullying 101. Ever seen someone who got bullied say “Yeah being shamed made me feel way better, it might in fact have fixed me”. No. Nobody honestly feels that way. What’s dumb is that as a gym you’re literally trying to help this person fix the thing you’re having a laugh at. Imagine a doctor making fun of a patient’s disease because their other patients don’t have it. Sounds absurd right?
While some tweeple empathised...
Others missed the point. And also the train to common-sense ville.
Anytime fitness replied to Mora’s tweet being apologetic of the email and promising to address the problem.
Looks like they’re going to be losing a ‘thick’ customer base after this little trick!
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