Peloton: A Cultural Pioneer? [Part 2]

Peloton has better strategic options to be a cultural pioneer.

In the first part of this blog, I analyzed the Peloton x lululemon partnership, using a cultural lens. In Part 2, I will go over couple of alternative strategic paths that Peloton could take to be a cultural pioneer and build its cultural cache.

Alternative Strategic Paths

I care about Peloton - personally and professionally. I love love love Andy Speer’s Sunday live classes, Jess King’s creative imagination, Cody’s Rigsby’s boldness, Adrian Willams’ beast mode, Alex Touissant’s contagious chants of confidence, and all the high-fives I receive from my Peloton kin. Peloton is home for me!

Professionally, I care about Peloton because I firmly believe that Peloton can be an iconic brand with prominent roles in culture - leading and shaping it. I might be biased! There are so many things that Peloton could do to be a cultural pioneer. This brand-loving heart of mine is aching when I see that the brand is not stepping up to that role but rather doing a collab with one of the most expected brands in the category. Yawn! Anyways…below, I humbly suggest couple of cultural strategy paths going forward.

1. NEW VISION: Peloton is a Culture. In today's marketplace, fitness has evolved beyond mere health-driven practices. It has become a thriving consumer culture driven by rituals, sanctuary spaces, mantras, tribes, utopias, anxieties, self-doubts, and social expectations. Peloton has the potential to stand as a prominent cultural and social agent, representing the epicenter of these profound and formative cultural forces within fitness, self-development, and health. Peloton is neither a product company nor a data one. Peloton is a culture.

   As a brand, Peloton has a culture around and about its brand, providing relational, reputational, and symbolic values for its consumers. Peloton already has its individual and communal rituals, deep meanings, own language, and desire-inducing commercialized symbols that shape consumers’ practices, self-concepts, and identity projects. This is the vision that should dictate the business strategies. This is the ideology that would attract more mainstream consumers. Not the bike. Not the apparel. Not the app.

Peloton Needs Cultural Strategy.

If Peloton wishes to pioneer cultural movements, it needs strategies that extend beyond subscriber acquisition. Cultural strategy helps brands and organizations assume and maintain their role as impactful and leading agents in culture and society. To scale, Peloton requires effective, impactful, and nuanced cultural strategies that continue to generate meaning, solidifying the brand’s role in the culture and its position as a social identity and cultural code guiding consumers' lives. As Montell highlights in her book Cultish, "Meaning-making is a growth industry.” Cultural strategy will help Peloton drive business growth, maintain competitiveness, and establish a strong cultural footprint.

adrianwilliamsnyc

A post shared by @adrianwilliamsnyc

2. NEW LENS: Cultural Cache Triumphs Perpetual Partnerships. Driven by its desire to be a data-driven company, Peloton chooses these partnerships to increase the size of its audience reach and, in hopes of converting more of them to its platforms. Peloton’s strategy of perpetually relying on new partnerships to bring the product to more people is not sustainable. Each new partnership will have less impact for Peloton and its mainstream-ing desires, eventually wearing the brand thin - culturally and equity-wise. Above all, these partnerships will not make Peloton part of cultural moments or help the brand claim an elevated cultural role in consumers’ lives. Peloton is not Instacart. Peloton is not Spotify. It is a different type of brand. The more explosive strategic growth path for Peloton will not be solely based on the analytics strategies perfected on SaaS platforms or grocery technology companies, but will be more culturally-driven.

Peloton’s Possible Cultural Gravitas Will Drive Growth.

While analytics - and the accompanying forecasting methods - undoubtedly contribute to unlocking limited subscriber growth, they fall short of helping brands to build cultural cache and be culturally-competent. Brands that lead culture rather than merely respond to it require dedicated cultural strategies for these ends. After building its cultural cache and wider cultural footprint, Peloton can have cultural gravitas for mainstream audience and also for other brand collaborations that would serve the brand with more sustainable business outcomes. See Nike’s collaboration playbook.

3. NEW BRAND STRATEGY: Cultural Expression Triumphs Data. Peloton sits at this very fertile cultural moment at the intersection of self, wellness, and space that undoubtedly give the the brand permission to devise strong and bold cultural expressions. Cultural expressions provides people “with the building blocks with which they construct meaningful lives. They give guidance on all the key social, political, and existential constructs ( e.g., social class, gender, race, beauty health, wellness, the body etc.).” The successful formulation and execution of the cultural expression by the brand determines the cultural literacy of the brand and builds its cache in the culture. It is how Nike expresses performance, how Jack Daniels expressed masculinity, or how VW Beetle expressed bohemian life made these brands iconic.

   Peloton borrowing cultural codes from other fitness brands in the category or other iconic brands - a manifestation of the widely contagious mimetic isomorphism in the creative agency world - is not helping the brand to devise strong and impactful cultural expressions as part of its branding strategy. The two commercials of Peloton are a big testament to this mimesis in cultural expressions. I will not analyze the commercials in depth from a cultural strategy or genealogy perspective but I want to briefly go over them to illustrate why they are not culturally moving the needle.

   Peloton: Anyone. Anytime - This commercial is simply explaining the functional benefits of the product and Peloton services, seeking to convince more people to the convenience of the Peloton’s products and services and hopefully drive choice. Peloton has something for everyone and you can workout from anywhere. Yawn! The creative brief seems to be a direct translation of this functional benefit. Probably they conducted a survey where disproportionate amount of respondents told that they love the convenience of Peloton because it helps them work from anywhere. Voila! This epidemic of direct translation of insights to creatives is killing brands slowly but surely.

   This particular commercial will not help the brand to claim any cultural moments or build cultural cache. And, it borrows from Nike’s long-time “everyone is an athlete” myth. Yet, I applaud the efforts of inclusive and authentic representation in the commercial cast. Unfortunately, inclusive representation does not warrant cultural competency. The choice of myth and literate use of cultural codes do the magic.

   Yes I Can. I loved this ad a bit more than the above. At least, it is addressing the cultural orthodoxy in the category - go beyond your limits. Yet, this “Yes I can” myth has been appropriated from the Obama Campaign and has been told over and over by Nike - people who are overcoming the social, cultural, political barriers and “just doing it”. The creative execution is also not very powerful and at some level didactic and masculine. It might probably be perceived borderline “toxic” by some fitness communities that do not align with these masculine impulses and storytelling styles in sports and fitness.

   Although this commercial is doing a better job in the aesthetization of the Peloton experience, its mimetic myth treatment will unfortunately not bring the cultural attention to the brand. I love Tunde! She is amazing and the right voice for this campaign. But, her tone and her speech in the commercial are both very similar to the myth Nike has been telling in its campaigns via Serena - Dream Crazier.

   I dont like criticizing things without sharing some ideas about what the better alternatives are. In the category, Equinox’s 2022 “Life is the Luxury” commercial as part of “It is Not Fitness, It is Life” campaign is doing a better job with the cultural expressions. The brand states:

   “LIFE IS THE LUXURY is the pursuit of independence, freeing yourself from the constraints of the mundane, and fully engaging in every aspect of your life. It’s a commitment to the elevated art of living.”

   This copy addresses the contemporary challenges, anxieties, and desires of the fitness enthusiasts and communities in their elevated, complex, and fluid lives. I love the aesthetization of the cultural expressions of the self, life, and movement throughout the commercial. And, it is important to note that although it is a gym ad, there is no gym shown anywhere in the commercial. That’s the power of good cultural strategy.

Peloton’s Bold Cultural Expressions Will Bring Mainstream Success.

I am scared that Peloton’s commitment to analytics quests will scrape all the contexts, meanings, and identity projects from the user insights, preventing all cultural innovation possibilities for Peloton. A good cultural brand needs to first understand and then challenge the cultural orthodoxies of its category and be literate about the contemporary cultural codes resonant with their audiences and communities. Eventually, brand should use these to devise bold cultural expressions. Growth for Peloton will not come from more consumers but rather from more cultural competency and bold cultural expressions that would help Peloton win over the mass market. As mainstream users rely on these cultural expressions in their identity projects, the perceived benefits of the product for the masses will amplify.

“Consumers do not buy technological benefits, they buy the version of the concepts culture takes over in guiding their perceptions of functionality and value.“ [Holt & Cameron, 2012]

Cultural branding requires a deep and layered grasp of knowledge on national, community, art subcultures, and popular culture and a solid comprehension of the cultural seismic shifts that shape gender, ethnicity, and class in the Zeitgeist. Peloton’s branding efforts should be driven by the understanding that brands are not mere images or creatives; they are historical, political, and cultural agents. Through these cultural branding efforts, Peloton can have some cultural cache whose desirability comes from these culturally, historically, and socially relevant stories that address prominent social tensions.

To succeed, Peloton should do well culturally which in turn will bring the financial growth. For those ends, brand should amplify the cool, not the analytics.

Let’s wrap the blog with an iconic brand and its strong cultural expressions that turned the brand around in 80s.