The CrossFit Crisis: A Marketing Perspective
This post will attempt to dissect the CrossFit crisis from a marketing and branding perspective. It’s an unusual situation where two of my worlds have collided and I wanted to take the opportunity to put my thoughts down on paper.
The world of CrossFit has recently been marred by scandal. If you’ve been following you’ll know it’s not the first time the CrossFit brand has been tarnished by the higher ranks of “HQ” and more often than not by the CEO, Greg Glassman.
If you haven’t been following, the most recent crisis started when CrossFit as an organisation remained curiously silent around Black Lives Matter. This was at a time where every other brand and it’s mother began pledging support. Remaining silent was not really an option.
Things escalated when CEO of CrossFit Inc. Greg Glassman responded to a tweet by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation with the below:
It further escalated when rather than apologising he tweeted the second reply 24-hours later. It further escalated when Glassman was recorded on a call saying: “We’re not mourning for George Floyd. I don’t think we or any of my staff are”. And it even further escalated when people dug up stories from the past of Greg’s crude and litigious behaviour and ran exposé podcasts on Glassman’s attitude and actions towards women within CrossFit. It’s exhausting, I know.
As this story raged on, prominent athletes (some with 1M+ followers on Instagram) began calling CrossFit out and gyms began to de-affiliate. For those new to the world of CrossFit, it operates on a franchise-like model where gyms pay an “affiliate fee” of $3,000 yearly to use the name “CrossFit” in their branding. Individual gyms are typically called “affiliates”. Over 600 gyms said they’d no longer be paying their fee within 24-hours, the number of those leaving kept climbing — over 1,000 had ditched the CrossFit name globally two days later. To top things off a member of Glassman’s inner-circle Nicole Carrol quit CrossFit HQ as the organisation was haemorrhaging affiliates.
Many called the “FLOYD-19” event the straw that broke the camel’s back. Years of questionable stories and comments, this was the cherry on top of the cow-dung sundae. Now there’s much, MUCH more context to explain, but to avoid writing a thesis I’m going to stop here. You get the idea, he’s not the best person to have attached to your brand. The bad news is as 100% owner it’s very hard to separate the two. He has since stepped down as CEO but remains sole owner.
CrossFit™ Versus CrossFit
There’s a slight difference in the heading above — it’s a difference I think worth paying attention to, and one I would suggest those who oppose Glassman but want to remain a part of what CrossFit has built embrace.
CrossFit is a brand but it’s also a training methodology and a sport. The CrossFit Games is a competitive fitness competition. CrossFit itself is built on a simple foundation that leads to a healthier lifestyle. Exercise, nutrition.
CrossFit has established a global community of fitness enthusiasts who can find a home wherever they are in the world based on that one word.
The big question here is what happens when you take CrossFit™ away from the community and methodology. Will the individual gyms be able to survive?
Smaller communities have been established to try and collect the breakaway gyms to stand as one unit — in a similar fashion to CrossFit™ but under another name.
Understanding Where CrossFit Stands Now and the Future of the Brand
Let’s first set some context with CrossFit’s earlier brand-led mistakes that are hurting the current recovery of CrossFit.
Brand Mistake #1
Firing all your content creators is usually a bad idea.
There was a time Glassman wasn’t CEO. CrossFit heralded an era of golden content and became a brilliant case study for the power of in-house media. The CrossFit Games became the biggest marketing weapon in CrossFit’s arsenal. Films documenting the Games made it to Netflix, athletes gained sponsorship deals from Nike and gained millions of followers. Money was being made and people were hearing about CrossFit like never before — the bad brand image of “isn’t that the thing where people all get injured” was being shaken off and replaced by a more exciting narrative.
Then 2018 hit. Glassman fired the CEO, the media team and shut down all of CrossFit’s social media accounts. Yep. Shut down all of the accounts, without warning. People went nuts. The CrossFit Games were to be stripped back, no content was to be produced and the sole focus of CrossFit as an organisation was to be health for normal people.
Now Glassman’s thinking made sense… kind of. He felt the Games were overshadowing the main purpose of CrossFit as an organisation:
CrossFit is a lifestyle characterized by safe, effective exercise and sound nutrition. CrossFit can be used to accomplish any goal, from improved health to weight loss to better performance. The program works for everyone — people who are just starting out and people who have trained for years.
Having super-human athletes perform impossible feats of fitness could potentially put people off walking into their local gym. CrossFit went from the thing that “got you hurt” to the thing that “I couldn’t possibly do — I’m not fit enough!”
But by doing this, Glassman damaged the brand amongst the existing base of CrossFitters. Athletes started speaking out against CrossFit HQ and those who had enjoyed watching the Games became disappointed and some disenfranchised.
A yearly event called the CrossFit Open decided who got to go to the CrossFit Games. People around the world with all different abilities would enter the Open for $20 and join their gym friends in running the workouts on a Friday night. It was a real highlight on the CrossFit community calendar and local gyms would drive marketing campaigns around it. Glassman dismissed the importance of the Open, dismissing the community and what they wanted in turn. The Open was still going but not nearly as exciting and alive as it had been. One popular athlete who also worked as a member of training staff at CrossFit HQ was fired by Glassman for disagreeing with the changing format.
Ideally they should have worked on separating the CrossFit training methodology product and the CrossFit Games product. Market them as different products under the same parent brand. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Brand Mistake #2
Setting core brand values and not sticking to them.
One of CrossFit’s core brand values is “community”. From its about page:
Your support network. At more than 15,000 affiliates around the world, people encourage and motivate each other in every class as they work toward their goals. Start training with friends.
The idea is that anyone, from anywhere can join a CrossFit gym and feel welcome. Well except if you’re black… is what people took from HQ’s lack of statement on BLM and Glassman’s, for lack of a better word, tasteless tweet.
CrossFit has long been called out on it’s lack of representation beyond white, middle class. It’s expensive to join a CrossFit gym so there’s an immediate barrier to entry. And the overwhelming majority of the sport’s top athletes are white.
The difficulty for CrossFit lies that within its community there is a strong police contingent. There’s history here with Glassman teaching police departments his training methodology in the early days, before it became a go-to for more mainstream fitness folk.
Taking what’s right or wrong morally out of this conversation and putting a pure-play marketing lens to it:
- How do you make a statement on BLM when a big part of the movement’s argument goes against a large part of your audience? (Police)
- How do you NOT make a statement on BLM when you claim to be all about the community? The community that welcomes everyone.
At this point CrossFit has upset everyone — from their perspective, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. From everyone else’s perspective, do the right thing. I’d also like to see numbers on the percentage of CrossFit gym members that are officers and who would have been offended by a supportive statement that showed the organisation to be against racism.
Brand Mistake #3
Put the entirety of your profit prospects into independent businesses who can walk away at any time.
Since this scandal broke the camel’s back it’s become clear that CrossFit as an organisation really hasn’t kept in touch with affiliates. They pay their fee each year, borrow the CrossFit name, have their coaches pay more money to get the CrossFit certifications and that’s that.
When CrossFit had a content machine communication probably seemed less important. It would have been a nice to have but the overspill of popularity fed through to gyms at a grassroots level and really softened the blow of HQ’s silence. Having the name above your door was enough to warrant paying the $3,000 yearly in itself. Who needs comms?!
The problem then comes when CrossFit as a brand turns toxic and all these small businesses have their names dragged through the mud by association. People begin to jump ship, dump the cancerous name and distance themselves from what is being branded a racist organisation. The individual gym communities begin to call on these small businesses to ditch CrossFit as they also don’t want to be associated or give money to Glassman.
Silence is deafening. Not only did CrossFit put out a statement on BLM too slowly, they didn’t communicate what was going on to affiliates. Members of gyms across the world started asking “where’s CrossFit?” in regards to the movement. Gym owners didn’t know. They had to protect their businesses and their communities the best way they knew how. For some this meant publicly denouncing CrossFit and de-affiliating unless significant change happened at HQ level. Again, where’s the adherence to that core value of “community” at a top level?
Brand Mistake #3.5
The sub-mistake here is you’re then also asking consumers which brand their loyalty lies with. Is it with CrossFit HQ or their local gym?
You’re also asking consumers to challenge their identity. One thing CrossFit has done really well as a brand is drive “irrational loyalty”, coined by Kevin Roberts ex-CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi. People build their identity around being a CrossFitter. If that then makes them a bad person by association, you are causing them a lot of conflict on a “this goes further than money” level. That’s a level of trust erosion and emotional damage that will be impossible to repair for some.
From Mistakes to Solutions
So now we have a brand that has already been significantly weakened by firing their content team, a large part of their earlier marketing success. Add to that a history of questionable behaviour from the CEO and other senior members of the HQ staff.
Then fail to stand up for one of your absolute core values in a time of national crisis when people are in desperate need of a supportive community and ask people to challenge their personal identities.
Brand Dilemma #1
Individual gyms often rely on CrossFit™ for it’s brand power when attracting new customers.
It turns out when people want to join a CrossFit gym they tend to type “CrossFit” into their favourite search engine and see where pins fall on the map. Although the SEO implications for gyms of removing CrossFit from their names won’t be immediate, long-term it’s set to be an issue. There are workarounds — if your coaching staff have CrossFit certifications you can legally use the word CrossFit on your website, but it’s still not as strong as having the brand in your name and on every inch of your site.
It has been argued that average Joe and Jane have no idea this scandal even exists. I tend to disagree. As do all the people that were reading the article on BBC News the day Glassman’s comments hit the number two “most read” spot on one of the most visited news sites IN THE WORLD. Anecdotally, my mum knew about it.
The rebuttal to this global coverage argument is people tend to have short attention spans — the news cycle moves fast. True, but tell someone you do CrossFit and see what their (usually negative) reaction is without the most recent issue — this story just adds another string to the “this is impossible to explain let alone defend” bow.
But people still type CrossFit into Google looking for a new place to workout, so maybe I’m wrong.
Brand Dilemma #2
Years of erosion mean trust and authenticity will be difficult to build, especially when there’s no accountability
Everything CrossFit does at the moment seems to be wrong. They replaced Glassman as CEO with Dave Castro, the guy who’s been responsible for the CrossFit Games and arguably the most successful part of the brand from a marketing perspective. He’s had a bit of a troubled past and has a few stories also (nowhere near as bad as Glassman but still — you want to be squeaky clean in this scenario) but some athletes who had called HQ out view him as a friend and trust him quite openly. Some athletes and gym owners have come out to say this isn’t enough as long as Glassman is owner. On a personal level I would agree with them. As long as he’s making the money he has final say and ultimately is an extension of the brand. They need a board of directors to better manage the organisation to prove it’s being run a fitness mafia.
They then put out a statement seemly trying to apologise for everything that had happened. Nothing they could write would be enough. Worth to note, Glassman still didn’t personally apologise. People viewed the statement as inauthentic, they didn’t trust what was being said. Glassman and HQ had shown years of behaviour like this, how could one poorly worded statement ever be enough?
They’ve now begun to organise CrossFit gyms into regions, establishing local representatives for gym owners and opening communication lines with HQ. Finally a step in the right direction — an understanding that these people make you your money so internal communications within the network is crucial. Otherwise they’re standing alone separate from the organisation and what’s to stop them jumping ship as some have.
They’ve also said they’re to run an independent review into diversity. People are calling this lip service saying they don’t really mean it and nothing will change even post-review. This is only fair after years of trust erosion.
The crux of this point is that trust will take years for HQ to earn back. And without accountability at the top no single action can possibly viewed as authentic. The community have said they need Glassman away from CrossFit for it to be open, inclusive and really stand for what it says.
Brand Dilemma #3
From emotive marketing to playing with identity
As I’ve previously touched upon, CrossFit as a brand has done a great job of building “irrational loyalty”. People have internalised being a CrossFitter into the self. The power of brand and being part of a genuine community has had a profound effect. This is great when times are good.
When times are bad, as they are now, you are asking people to question their identity. Do they stick with the part of their identity that associates them with the CrossFit brand, or do they ditch it whether that be justified by conflicting morals or self-preservation. Do they stick with the local business they’ve chosen to support or vote with their wallet from the wider CrossFit organisation as a whole until something changes, hurting the little guy in the process?
Furthermore, people in the CrossFit community feel the brand belongs to them in some way, and CrossFit have created this feeling through their messaging, values and business model. If you reject what the community is asking you are telling them they never really did belong.
The only way to succeed in this regard is to accept sweeping change from the top down. Consumer expectations have been set through brand but behaviours are not stacking up. And when consumers are willing to leave a brand as personal as CrossFit you know expectations have really been shattered.
Solutions
Are there solutions that will ever go far enough? People believe in the methodology and love the sport so it’s entirely possible they’ll be able to cut their brand affinity while still engaging.
One thing I haven’t touched on all that much is also the power of the local communities. People care about the affiliate gyms they go to — the difficulty now lies on whether they care more about the wrongs of CrossFit or more about the rights of their local affiliate… and whether they can stomach giving Glassman more money.
In my view:
- CrossFit need to really set in stone what their core values are. These need to be the lifeblood of the brand from the top down. If it’s community, staff need to live and breathe actions that are best for the WHOLE community, and not make certain sections feel unwelcome through their behaviours.
- The organisation needs to listen. If you’ve involved people in your brand for this long you cannot walk away when they disagree. It seems they’re at least trying by opening up lines of communication.
- Accountability needs to be present. A board of directors needs to be instated.
- Focus on rebuilding trust. Take authentic actions to show people you really do care about the things you say you do. If you’re trying to be inclusive you need to prove it over time.
- Understand you can be authentic without being personal. CrossFit has let too many people in — sure it’s nice that everyone feels they have semi-ownership of the brand. The downside in this case is it’s resulted in non-professional behaviour from those at a top-level. If you want to be a multi-million dollar company behave like one.
- Bring back high-value content. CrossFit needs to do some serious brand damage control. Part of this comes down to rebuilding trust but part of this also comes down to adding brand appeal. Extend CrossFit’s audience out towards people who haven’t been scarred by the negativity. And be more representative of everyone in every community. Be the thing that brings people together, not drives them apart.
- Offer affiliates robust marketing support through training, valuable marketing activity and assets gyms can use. CrossFit hasn’t just damaged its own brand, it’s damaged the micro-brands that make up the community and bottom line. It needs to make up for that and provide value beyond a name.
- Hire a communications firm.
