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6. APPI products
Currently, the group of organisations all under the APPI umbrella offer the following products:
- Training and educational courses – target professional physiotherapists
- Classes and one to one lessons – mainly women and consumer
- Private referrals from NHS and private doctors – target GPs both private and NHS
- Company schemes – target multi corporate companies and possibly target those professions that are physically strenuous
- Sports rehab – sport and fitness, mainly men
- Associated products, ie, DVDs, books, etc
7. Challenges/threats
- Branding – main brand and several sub-brands, long names and old fashioned artwork, some confusion about geography, requirement to appeal to diverse audiences including the NHS etc.
- Only one key Unique Selling Point (USP) which is that APPI only trains fully qualifies physiotherapists – there are no other USPs or concepts so need to look at developing these through branding exercise
- Low public profile of APPI and its owners Glenn and Elisa (although excellent work has been done to build profile amongst professional audiences)
- Lack of association between Glenn and Elisa Withers and the brand
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NHS currently provides physiotherapy and Pilatesis a luxury and would not go down well for NHS paying for it in the current climate
- Lots of competition from other private providers
- Expensive – for both graduates/students and for paying customers
8. Opportunities/strengths
- Strong business leaders with good reputations in their field
- NHS shake up could provide opportunities for private provision, ie, physiotherapist bank/consortia? May be cheaper than employing someone
- Pilates is extremely popular and advocates swear by its benefits
- The APPI’s USP in training only those who are qualified physiotherapists, give it credibility
- Waiting lists for physiotherapists in the NHS is long – 6-8 weeks – a long time to wait if you are in pain
- Preventative – could focus on how much musculoskeletal problems cost the NHS and how much money can be saved from practising Pilates and also on the problems that can be avoided to encourage people to take personal responsibility
- Potential market could be those who are self-employed in physically strenuous jobs to encourage them to take out private insurance or to invest in physio-Pilates to avoid and off-set problems
- Currently women make up large bulk of customers or providers – push into male markets, particularly through the sports rehabilitation route
- APPI’s work with Royal Ballet and football clubs provides a good opportunity to tap into people and events to sell human interest stories that are quirky and entertaining
9. Competitors
Competitor analysis
Freshwater workstream 1 – Branding
The APPI has encountered a challenge in establishing a link between its various sub-brands in the minds of stakeholders and potential customers. Freshwater fully appreciates the central importance of a strong brand in developing new business, securing investment and fostering a sense of unity and clear direction amongst staff.
To establish the best way forward it will be important for APPI to think carefully about the following considerations.
a. What value do our current core brand bring to the business?
Considering this carefully will help us to assess how important it is that we maintain the existing core brand.
It is worth remembering that a brand can only be considered a brand if it:
... is something that customers ask for by name
... is the name used by customers when talking about the product/service with other people
... is when people think of the name rather than the product/service
... is something which has developed a personality of its own, beyond the product/service itself
... is something that people would pay a premium for under that and no other name.
b. What are our sub-brands?
Beyond APPI’s core brand offering – that it trains fully qualified physiotherapists – there is currently remarkably little sub-branding.
Sub-brands are products with the same fundamental mission as the "mother brand", but a slightly different personality, to reach a new target audience and/or charge a price premium.
Sub-brands are often created to appeal to specific audiences – but its important to consider how the brand and sub-brand support each other. For example, the sub-brand can feed off the core brand by ‘borrowing’ its brand values (quality, excellence etc.). But its existence should not dilute the strength of the core brand – it should ‘give something back’. Sub-brands tend to work best when they trip off the tongue or act as a first name and a surname. (Successful examples include: Johnson’s Baby, Ford Fiesta, BigMac and the Apple ranges i-Pod, i-Phone, i-Pad.)
As we can see from the competitor analysis, successful competitors have developed a range of sub-brands and a number of USPs to sell their brand to their audiences.
It is therefore crucial that we explore the best way in which to package and sell the APPI brand, developing a number of sub-brands, USPs and, essentially, concepts market it to a wide range of audiences if we are to compete successfully with other companies in the market.
We should consider, for example, what are the core brand values we wish to promote across our business – and which are unique to the sub-brands? For example, the core brand values might be:
- professional standards
- clinical approach
- treatment/healing
- wellbeing/fun
In collaboration with APPI, we can do this by holding an Aims and Objectives seminar. Involving the management team, we would use this session to flesh out what the APPI offering is, what is the current relationship between our brand and sub-brands, how effective are the current sub-brands in doing what we want them to do, key messages, themes and concepts that fit each offering and USPs to help develop a range of sub-brands.
c) What resources are available for rebranding and promoting sub-brands?
This question will help us to reach a decision on whether the business can support and develop sub-brands, and if so, how many it can sustain.
Each sub-brand requires promotion in its own right. Without a promotional budget, people will not get to hear about it, understand it and be able to identify it – and it will not become a brand in the true sense.
There are various resource issues associated with developing a strong brand:
- Market research – necessary to establish the market environment and understand consumer behaviour as it relates to your product offer
- Strategy development – creating a sound marketing or branding strategy to support your business plan with the benefit of specialist advice as neede
- Product development – creating, tweaking or refining the product/service itself in the light of research and strategy
- Creative design and collateral development - employing the services of a professional designers, copywriters, marketing specialist etc. to bring your brand to life Promotion – designing and implementing a marketing mix including direct marketing, advertising, PR, e-marketing etc
- Manufacturing and distribution – the logistics of getting your product/service to market
- Tracking and evaluation – assessing progress of the brand and identifying when and how to reassess the entire strategy, aspects of the promotional mix etc. This is a live, cyclical process and refinement should be ongoing.
The steps above illustrate the fact that the more brands you have, the more resources you will need to devote to promoting them.
So where do we go from here?
The following analysis considers the various options that are available to APPI to address the branding issue:
Option 1: Unify all products and services under a new, single parent brand
What’s involved?
This option is the most radical one available - it involves scrapping all existing branding and creating a new one which will be used to market APPI and its products.
Option 2: Unify all products and services under the existing parent brand
What’s involved?
This option is a good compromise and involves keeping the core brand APPI, and with it its connotations to its reputation as a leading trainer of Pilates instructors but build into it other sub-brands and USPs all under one roof. This would include developing a single name and channel under which all the APPI offerings would sit. As part of this process, we suggest that a new website is developed so that there is a single source and point of entry for all audiences.
Option 3: Maintain current brand names, but devote resources to building the profile of individual brands and linking them to the parent brand - APPI
What’s involved?
This option is the most resource intensive in the long run as it involves maintaining numerous brands at the same time and can continue the confusion but will be the least costly outlay in the short term.
Work programme
a. A strategy session with organisations key leaders which will run through methodically all of the key issues that need to be addressed, including:
- Marketing priorities to match business objectives
- Competitor assessment
- Key messages – what we want people to think of when they think of us
- Brand and sub-brands
- Priority audiences
- Marketing tools and techniques
The aim of the session is to get to the bottom of the issues that need to be resolved at the outset of the marketing programme and determine how radical a solution is required. This would include exploring all the above options and determining which is the best fit for APPI’s current needs.
b. Writing up the strategy session with a series of recommendations for action
(You might choose to invite us to support you in implementing these actions – or allow the in-house team to lead on them.)
This would include preparing a design brief and support to work with designers to get the brand identify you’re happy with.
Freshwater workstream 2 – Media
Current media landscape
Understanding the media space in which the health, fitness and beauty sectors operate in is vital if we are to get APPI’s voice heard above the crowd.
The fitness and health sectors are overcrowded – the last 10 years has seen a huge increase in interest around Pilates with the ‘media noise’ reaching a crescendo. In part, this has been propelled by numerous celebrities jumping on the bandwagon to endorse its untold benefits, with daily examples of celebrity who have managed to get fit, lose weight, look better, etc, with the help of Pilates. This has coincided with an explosion in the number of women’s celebrity-led magazines further fuelling the public interest.
However, the new age of austerity together with increasing attention away from Z list celebs to real life women may mean that the trend is on the wane.
Despite the popularity of Pilates and indeed the training courses offered by APPI, neither APPI or its people or products have so far achieved what we call a PR breakthrough – a regular presence in the plethora of media content covering their marketplace issues. .
Techniques for media relations
We would seek to achieve media coverage through the following methods:
- Positioning and establishing Glenn Withers as spokesperson for APPI fitness and sport
Glenn would be the main point of contact for all APPI comments bar the clinic side of the business
- Positioning and establishing Elisa Withers as spokesperson for APPI clinics
Elisa would be the main point of contact for comments for the clinics based in London
- Use of celebrity case studies to endorse media campaigns and key messages
Although celebrity case studies may be difficult to come by but can be particularly lucrative for product development. Working with APPI, Freshwater would identify a list of celebrities we could approach to develop endorsement for APPI.
- Identify real life case studies – although many magazines request celebrity endorsement, may others love real life case studies so any one that has a strong human interest story to tell, for example, ‘doing Pilates at APPI helped cure my back ache’
- Personal touch – identify and target key individual journalists and opinion leaders and set up meeting, lunch or contact by phone to develop relationships
- Develop interesting angles targeted to appeal to consumer audiences focusing on anything that is new, unique, interesting or tell a strong human interest story
- Develop good marketing materials to support media activity including brochures, fact sheet, research and myths and facts sheet
- Tap into policy by commissioning research to show the cost of back ache and other musculoskeletal conditions cost the NHS and employers in the UK
Work programme
Freshwater proposes that to achieve the key aims and objectives, the strategy would focus on three key stages as follows:
STAGE 1: SCOPING
This includes identifying story angles, real life and celebrity case studies, identifying key journalists and opinion leaders, key media targets/publications and opportunities for slots that we could exploit.
During this period we would also look at ways in which we can differentiate APPI from the rest of the competition. Although its USP as being the only Pilates training that is based on fully qualified physiotherapists, we would use this period to explore other USPs, particularly in keeping with our positioning statement that the APPI methods is the best for preventing and rehabilitating back ache. For example, we could commission research to show just what makes the method unique to treating back ache and use this information in a number of ways. This information could be included in all of APPI marketing materials to ensure that the key message hits home and is based on hard scientific fact.
STAGE 2: DEVELOPING COLLATERAL
Developing collateral for a media campaign is an important way to ensure that we can provide journalist with a professional and reliable source of useful information ‘on tap’. With pressing deadlines and a constant demand for content, we should ensure we have a library of useful material (copy, photos, interviewees, products etc.) to enable us to respond quickly to any opportunities for coverage.
What we can include in our suite of media material will depend on your budget and priorities – but it might include, for example:
- Brochure on how to use Pilates Art to prevent or rehabilitate back ache featuring Glenn
- Fact sheet consisting of qualitative and quantitative research to support the evidence base for the APPI method
- A question and answer paper on difficult questions that the business may be challenges on
- ‘Top ten’ documents e.g. Top ten myths about Pilates exposed (tacking recent coverage questioning the value of Pilates), Top Ten facts about the APPI method
- Biographies for Glenn, Elisa and colleagues with a selection of photos
- DVD clips on file to send to websites
In all instances, the key spokesperson for APPI will be Glenn Withers. However, there will be times that a female spokesperson will be more appropriate to the target audience – or we may not be able to set up a meeting with Glenn on time. Therefore – it will be important to have a selection of spokespeople available
- Case studies (both real life and celebrity)
STAGE 3: LAUNCH MEDIA CAMPAIGN
Once we have built up a good source of collateral and examples of the kind of stories we could use, Freshwater suggests launching and implementing the media campaign. The aim of the media campaign is to do two things:
- Raise Glenn and Elisa’s profile
- Raise the profile of the Pilates Art Physiotherapy clinics
1. Raise the profile of Glenn and to a lesser degree Elisa
In order to do this successfully, we would start associating Glenn and Elisa with the APPI method as one and the same thing, using the APPI brand as a credible platform and a byword for quality and excellence from which to launch them.
We would seek to do this by:
- Responding to topical issues and current affairs as and when they come up
This would very much be about reputation management, helping to establish and associate Glenn and Elisa with the APPI brand, giving them credibility and gravitas as industry leaders in the sector while delivering expert comment or opinion in response to misinformation.
Responding in a well thought out and balanced way to pieces such as the recent Times article by Peta Bee will have three effects.
Firstly it will help Glenn and Elisa take the lead and put them into the media arena. It will ensure that their voice is heard not just by the media but by their peers too, helping to put them on the map so to speak.
Secondly, it will act as a calling card for journalists so that eventually they will start to seek out Glenn and Elisa as experts for comments and quotes for articles or even request case studies.
Finally, it will enable Glenn and Elisa to influence what is being said while keeping the association with the APPI brand alive.
- Identifying comment piece slots in national and local media, consumer and industry
Once we have raised Glenn and Elisa’s profile sufficiently, we can start looking at ways in which to sell in comment pieces to media slots – these can be very difficult to achieve as the competition is fierce and only those with a high enough profile and with the necessary expertise are invited to contribute.
For Glenn, we would concentrate on fitness and sport, for Elisa we would look at women’s consumer and health. Potential slots we could look at include the Daily Mail health Section on Tuesdays, Evening Standard and the Telegraph’s Health/Life Coach section.
- Developing a series of features using both Glenn and Elisa’s expertise
This means developing and writing a feature and assigning it to Glenn or Elisa, thereby selling in their knowledge and expertise and targeting commissioning editors. Success is very much dependent on whether what is being said is new, interesting or controversial and a good strong case study or strong statistics and facts and figures can often clinch the deal so it is important to have a good source of collateral.
This works best when targeting professional audiences – it can also be used for consumer audiences but this is often a little bit more difficult as consumer publications prefer to have their own writers do it or commission a freelancer. However, this can be overcome by pitching the synopsis and offering Glenn or Elisa and the brand as a case study to a commissioning editor (in effect doing the journalist’s work for them) or to a freelance journalist – Freshwater has a number of good contacts that we can call on.
Freshwater has successfully sold in many feature packages to a variety of media outlets including the Guardian, HSJ, Nursing Times and Public Servant.
2. Raise the profile of the Pilates Art Physiotherapy clinics
This part of the campaign would be a more general awareness-raising of the APPI method and APPI products to direct audiences and increase footfall to the three clinics in London and would consist of three key elements:
- Responding to and piggy backing on to current affairs and news
One of Freshwater’s strengths is our ability to monitor the changing media climate in order to provide our clients with opportunities to comment on topical issues.
We would track and contribute to forward features in the consumer press, which we research by directly obtaining features lists from target publications and using our media databases. We also receive daily requests for information from journalists in all sectors, which we use to place comments for clients in target media.
We would begin by identifying a list of potential topics of media interest relating to the work and priorities of APPI, and review this with you to identify those on which you would like to be viewed as an opinion leader. We would then work with you to develop a short comment to use to ‘sell in’ APPI as an expert commentator. We would also prepare a forward features list.
We would monitor the media closely for opportunities – we know that success depends on a rapid response as well as the offer of expert comment – and respond with the agreed material to develop interest from the journalist, offering more detailed written comment, a letter to the editor or an interview as appropriate. We would identify any other relevant issues and suggest them to you as potential comment areas, as well as relevant which might generate media interest and/or opportunities to meet key journalists.
For example, we could respond to the following story which appeared in the Telegraph about the link between exercise and youthful skin () by developing a story package on how Pilates can help you stay young and looking younger than your age.
Another recent news item saying that diet, not exercise, is the main factor in losing weight could be used to develop a response or press release highlighting how Pilates can help people control appetite or eat less.
But a word of warning – responding to topical issues continuously can be a double edged sword and can result in hot air rather than informed comment if used too often. It is therefore important to pick the right battles and focus on issues that add value to the brand and really demonstrate knowledge and innovation are have something new to say.
- Instigating proactive PR campaigns
Focusing on one activity per month targeting consumer and professional audiences alternately, we would create our own collateral to sell in to media. This means developing strong stories or news around health, fitness, sport rehabilitation and focusing on prevention using both real life and celebrity led case studies.
We propose that proactive media relations should cover four distinct areas:
- Prevention – tapping into government focus on getting people to take more responsibility for their health, promoting APPI’s method as the best way to prevent back ache and other musculoskeletal problems targeting all consumer health and fitness
- Rehabilitation – tapping into the sport and fitness sector of the industry, promoting APPI’s method as best way to help regain strength and fitness after injury
- Upholding standards – focusing on APPI credentials as an industry leader and the only company to offer training to fully qualified physiotherapists based on the science of movement
- Professional – this would be about focusing on raising awareness among professionals that APPI is an industry leader to encourage referrals to clinics
Below are just some ideas for proactive media activity.
a. Launch – cost of backache to NHS and business campaign
Assuming that APPI will have a new brand to work with, we propose launching the new APPI brand to position it in the preventative and rehabilitation sector by commissioning and publishing results on how much back ache costs the NHS and business in days off sick, tapping into the current economic climate with public sector cuts and sickness incapacity cuts looming.
We would further support the launch with a marketing campaign consisting of a brochure on how to prevent back ache with Pilates exercises recommended by Glenn Withers, head of APPI. We could include a ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ section and contact details for all three clinics in London.
b. Work life campaign
Building on the above campaign, target specific professional groups such as businesses or those who are self employed in physically strenuous jobs such as bin men, builders, truck drivers, farmers, care workers, nurses or warehouse operatives.
Aim is to highlight the importance of prevention and rehabilitation in ensuring that we live healthy lives. The media campaign could be divided into consumer and professional audiences.
Consumer: could use real life case study of self employed person who takes their health seriously by looking after their back with Pilates and physiotherapy – focus on the importance of this group not being able to afford taking time off work for back problems, particularly in the current climate, hence why they feel it is vital that they invest the time and energy in to taking Pilates classes.
Professional: using a corporate company as a case study, detail the importance of looking after staff health by ensuring that they have access to Pilates classes as part of their package.
c. Launch charity run/activity for charity of choice
Recruit support from celebrity and real life case studies to promote and raise awareness.
d. Tap into Olympics
Provide free services/tutelage to underprivileged kids in inner city areas in the run up to the Olympics to help them get fit. Could do a launch at local school – Wimbledon could be a good venue.
e. Tap into trends on TV
TV formats are seasonal – this autumn will see the newest version of Strictly Come Dancing – we suggest approaching one of the professional dancers, for example Camilla Dallerup, to front a new product with launch at one of the studios.
f. Upholding standards
The recent Times article by Peta Bee and the current furore over unregulated Botox clinics clearly demonstrate the importance of regulation and high standard of care. We could do a comment piece from Glenn on myths and facts (see attached) about the best way to do Pilates, highlighting APPI’s USP and brand as trustworthy and reliable.
g. Develop link between physical activity and brain power
Following up on recent research which shows that active kids are smarter, we could launch classes for children and teenagers to help them concentrate better and improve learning skills. We would need to develop or find evidence that shows a link between Pilates and brain power.
h. Develop specific products/classes targeting different audiences
This could include new Pilates products targeting different age groups, specific classes for those with back ache and that we could launch so that we can make the most of APPI’s USP (the only organisation that trains fully qualified physiotherapists) to increase credibility and gravitas within the industry and among consumers.
i. Develop sponsorship/free offers/competitions
This would provide an opportunity to sell in APPI’s key messages at every opportunity, focusing on its USPs.
Freshwater would explore opportunities both nationally and locally to help promote the APPI brand – we would also focus on consumer magazines to look at ways of offering competitions and free offers to reach target audiences.
FINALLY…
Social media
Social media can be a very useful tool in supporting all the above activity to help reach as wide an audience as possible and lock in key messages but it does require active management. Freshwater recommends that some elements of social media are built in to the campaign, such as monitoring what is being said across the online community and setting up threads and forums on sites such as Mumsnet (targeting mums and mums to be), consumer online magazines and other related sites to ensure that APPI and its spokespeople have a voice and ongoing presence.
4. Our consultancy rates
In order to deliver value for money and ensure sufficient capacity, work would be undertaken at the most appropriate level of seniority so that senior input is used when required.
The sample below illustrates costings – these could be graded up or down depending on how much APPI wants to spend.
Workstream 1
Workstream 2
