Shaking Up the Status Quo: The Virgin Rebellion Against Gym Class Cuts
Join the Virgin Rebellion as we explore how seemingly minor management decisions at Virgin Active have sparked a grassroots movement, calling for the return of beloved gym classes and a reevaluation
Churchill had just left the UN General Assembly meeting, after having made a marvellous speech full of his cleverly worded threats to everyone who stands on the wrong side of history, and I had mostly finished some really cool animations showing how Free Virgin moves into Fulham Town Hall using the Grand Hall as the seat of government when I thought ‘nah, not feeling it today.’ I was for a moment exploring that thought: hello to myself, why do we feel like we feel today?
Just earlier I managed to just avoid oblivion caused by Instagram’s computer algorithms which had determined my recent #virginrebellion videos - speculating as far as the details are concerned - as documentary evidence of past achievements or videos evidencing some advanced plans of mine to invade a country or other crimes of a similar nature, and having either achieved it or being so confident about my future success that it allowed me and my evilness to tantalise the victims of war. Short of banning me, it put my account on notice. A very lovely operator believed my pleas of innocence and had it fixed in no time. But it worried me a little bit to think anyone could think that I am in any shape or form suggesting physical violence or any threat or intimidation. I like my video style for its absurdist characteristics, taking a mundane situation which is bizarre and unrealistic. Seeing our normal behaviour in such a context sometimes brings an interesting insight - we do absurd things sometimes without realising it.
The #virginrebellion is borne out of the fact that two small management decisions by Virgin Active impact a lot of people, first and foremost directly. Ever since bodypump got cancelled I only did cycling. And there are indirect consequences: in my case, for instance, resigning myself to the fact that I still maintain potential for amazing legs whilst becoming increasingly challenged above the belt line and starting to think what kind of social interactions would be most suitable to such an existence. And what indeed saddens me are the consequences on livelihoods, with instructors losing their jobs or living in fear that they are next.
I am not on a literal war path, but I do harbour hopes that enough publicity may ‘nudge’ the company into a dialogue, and I am a very big fan of dialogue. It’s not two parties exchanging information:
A: I hate you!
B: So do I.
A: I knew it all along.
B: What do you want from me?
Not this kind of dialogue. What I am talking about is a scenario someone can see the world through the eyes of the person with whom a dialogue is taking place. Seeing an issue this way and respecting what you see for what it is - maybe this is what’s missing here. And there is a reason why.
I read this interview the CEO gave a few years ago before he joined Virgin Active. He describes his experience managing a restaurant chain called NÜ Health Food Café, and the difficulty in driving the change he wanted to see.
So here is what the article says:
“At first, customers didn’t like the changes […]. “They were very negatively perceived. People left our stores,” he admits. They complained about the taste of the new recipes, that the products were too expensive, and that the colour scheme was better before. Within six months, though, the changes started to pay off and the company developed a solid base of customers.”
I am not so sure what was wrong with the old menu to fully understand what exactly he did that was so awesome that we need an article to tell everyone. But let’s say he installed some major upgrades. Which then begs the question, is this what is happening here? Have we become the fitness club version of a disgruntled customer base at NÜ Health Food which is soon to be replaced with a more refined clientele that appreciates the new flavour: elevator music without bodypump, hm, so delicious! Maybe, it is possible. And if that’s the case I won’t be too upset either. In my professional work, I always believed more in what clients do than what they say. So maybe Virgin knows something about its consumers which we don’t yet fully realise ourselves, e.g. the inconvenience of changing the gym is too strong because the alternative may be a 15 min further walk, just as an example. Maybe that will be most of us in a few months: I don’t love it there, sometimes hate it a bit, but I shall suffer through it for now. It is possible to build a profitable business from such a client segmentation, one that is not sustainable though.
Because what strikes me here is how amateurishly these changes are bulldozed in. Epidemic Sound, the provider of the royalty-free music, caters for online creators. Why not use this? Right now my personal customer experience presents as follows: there is less of what I like and value and replaced with stuff I don’t value - pilates eghh please keep that for somebody else - at a significantly higher price going forward, and the company will save some money which they will invest in more... pilates! But online creators; Mr CEO, knock knock, wakey wakey, do you know what this means? It is an opportunity to give your consumers a different experience because such technology changes very often come along with changes to what matters to a consumer when making a purchase decision. Once you had Apple Music even the cheapest and best physical CD would no longer be appealing, so why not use that, create some fresh Virgin music, have a competition to see who comes up with the best playlist, be creative and give a reason why this was done for your clients and not you at the expense of it. And you have not done that. And since music and the kind of activity available in a fitness club probably already covers 90% of what matters, I do not understand why there is no apology. This shift to royalty-free music has become such a big issue because of how badly it's been pushed down everyone's throats, being ruthless in pursuing some stupid cost-saving nirvana. Please reconsider.
#VirginRebellion #BringBackTheBeat #FreeTheMusic
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