RIESTER

By Rich Thomaselli

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Gold’s Gym, arguably the highest-profile name in the workout-club category, is undergoing an extreme brand makeover.

Gold’s wants to lose the perception that the brand is viewed as a place where bodybuilders craft their physiques and intimidate anyone else trying to work out.

Once known as a musclehead mecca, Gold’s is reaching for a bigger share of the $16 billion industry by marketing itself in a kinder, gentler, fashion: as a health-and-fitness center for everyone from babies to baby boomers.

“We must evolve,” said Gold’s Gym Senior VP-Chief Marketing Officer Joe Flanigan. “If we stay exactly where we’ve been, soccer moms and boomers move on and we remain a brand with nice black-and-white photographs of when Arnold [Schwarzenegger] used to work out there.”

A weighty proposition
With rivals such as Bally Total Fitness and 24 Hour Fitness edging closer to its lead, Gold’s is leveraging its $30 million ad budget with a print, TV, radio and internet campaign

One of Golds new TV spots, featuring the tagline, “Change Your Body. Change Your Life.” Executions, created by independent Riester Agency, Phoenix, include a senior citizen lifting weights and a woman in a lap pool, among others.

Without completely trashing its 41-year history and tradition — in fact, it’s keeping its iconic logo of a chiseled bodybuilder with a sagging barbell — Gold’s is walking a fine line. It wants to trade on its experience in the field but at the same time lose the perception, found in its own company research, that the brand is viewed as a place where bodybuilders craft their physiques and intimidate anyone else trying to work out.