Psychology Fitness
MAKING COMPETITORS IRRELEVANT BY CREATING A NEW CATEGORY
ISSUES
The Cliffhanger Academy like many innovators had little understanding or awareness of what they did, even after 5 years of operation. As a brand, they struggled to succinctly articulate all they did in a way that resonated and a lack of consistency across the brand’s communications was damaging its integrity. As a personal training business in Manhattan, they had high high costs and significant price-based competition. Growth was proving difficult as they looked to move away from exchanging time for money and the advent of COVID made it harder to command a premium for training as customers moved online or interstate.
INSIGHT
Research revealed our ideal target market had both psychologists and personal trainers. Like many New York executives they were time poor and the inconvenience of seeing both a psychologist and trainer was a gap in the market no one had solved. Cliffhanger’s founder, albeit now a trainer, was formerly a registered psychologist. It emerged that people were willing to pay 300%-400% more for psychology than personal training and even more for the convenience of a “two in one” solution. There was also significantly less competition in psychology than in personal training, the barriers to entry were higher and the category had more premium perceptions.
ANSWERS
CUT THRU repositioned the business as a convenient, psychology-first offer that trained minds through bodies. This enabled them to create a price premium and unique barriers to entry their competitors couldn’t replicate. Rather than operating across two competitive categories with established perceptions and biases, we created one we could both lead and own. Psychology-Fitness™ was born - a new category with a name designed to take full ownership of it. This automatically positioned the brand as the market leader whilst increasing understanding and awareness of their offer and its benefits.
In combining psychology with personal training CUT THRU opened us to an entirely new, larger and more profitable market not just in New York, but globally. This allowed us to charge a premium for a services and rendered our competitors irrelevant by creating a new category we can truly own with barriers to entry that simply can't be competed with.
Founder | Psychology Fitness New York
