Les Mills

Objective

Achieving attribution gains through Media Mix Modelling

Les Mills is an international fitness brand founded on the dream of Kiwi Olympic athlete, Les Mills. For over 50 years, the brand has amassed 12 gyms, 20,000 clubs and 130,000 instructors to deliver workout programs designed to revolutionise the face of the fitness industry. Les Mills' key offering is their on-demand LES MILLS+ app, which provides subscribers with unlimited access to scientifically designed fitness programs across a range of workouts.

Through their organic TikTok activity, they regularly share everything from exercise tips to behind the scenes content, and has quickly gained over 60K followers. To leverage this active, fitness-focussed community on TikTok, Les Mills has also explored paid campaigns on platform. For instance, running full-funnel activity to drive performance objectives, and partnering up with creators to drive awareness across their suite of services.

While these initial campaigns delivered promising results, the brand wanted to understand the direct impact of TikTok within their media mix on their business objectives. Attribution data from other sources provided incomplete representations of the impact of the platform, either under or over-reporting on conversion and revenue attributions.

So, in pursuit of a single source of truth to support decision making, Les Mills partnered with a third party Media Mix Modelling (MMM) specialist to conduct quarterly tests and understand the impact of their digital channel.

Solution

Reaching peak campaign fitness through storytelling

Les Mills' paid activity on TikTok is structured under three key pillars: prospecting, re-marketing and win-back. The audience group within each pillar is defined by platform and internal data and plays out on platform through a mix of brand and performance activity.

To support their on-platform activity, the fitness brand drew on the slogan Choose Happy to develop a strategy focused on showcasing the joy and satisfaction of working-out through storytelling. To tell these stories, Les Mills drew on the support of TikTok's creator services, TTCX and TTCC, to identify content styles and TikTok creators who would be able to demonstrate just how easy it is to work out at home and fit exercise into your every-day routine.

With support from their global paid media agency, Incubeta, these creatives, which featured mainstream talent such as Taylor Lautner and Paul Wesley, were amplified through In-feed and TopView ad placements to drive awareness and reach amongst Les Mills' key audience groups. Once engaged, users were encouraged to sign-up to LES MILLS+.

Results

Lifting ROI and ROAS to hit a new PB

By working in close collaboration with the TikTok team, Les Mills was able to leverage the ad products and TikTok-first creator solutions that would drive the most impact for the brand across the funnel.

Notably, the MMM study revealed that TikTok delivered a 53% higher ROI, with the most cost-effective CPM when compared to all other social channels. Geo-lift experimentation also showed that TikTok delivered efficient and incremental signups with a 700% ROAS and, that the platform was responsible for 14x as many sign-ups to LES MILLS+.

The focus on brand activity through creator-led content on TikTok also proved successful, driving 55% higher ROI compared to Performance and Consideration media buying objectives. TikTok creator content also proved to be more efficient than business as usual activity across all funnels, resulting in a 20% higher ROI.

These results have resulted in Les Mills scaling their investment on TikTok and building creator led content into their always-on paid and organic content activity.