Founded in 2010, Elite Fitness has grown from a single flagship club in Hanoi into one of Vietnam’s most respected premium gym chains. The brand has built its reputation on five-star facilities, expert trainers, and a holistic wellness offering that blends fitness with lifestyle.

Elite Fitness operates 14 clubs across Vietnam’s major cities, serving tens of thousands of members With annual revenues reaching around USD 19 million.

Its strong brand presence and high-end positioning make it a go-to destination for urban professionals looking for more than just a workout.

“We’ve built the best gyms in the country — but not enough people know it..”

The first trigger that Elite Fitness to seek external support came during their Q1 performance review, when they noticed membership growth had stalled despite continued investment in facilities and trainers.

Competitors were gaining traction with louder campaigns and bolder messaging.

The leadership team realised:

“We had the facilities, the trainers, the experience — but we were stuck at a plateau. Our signups were slowing, and we were losing mindshare to louder competitors. We needed a partner who could sharpen our strategy and turn the volume up to 11.”

That moment made it clear they needed a marketing partner to sharpen their brand, amplify their presence, and turn operational excellence into market dominance.

While exciting and full of opportunities, Elite Fitness’s situation came with some major challenges:

• Stalled Growth – Membership numbers had been flat for three consecutive quarters.
• Weak Digital Presence – Despite having a premium brand, their website and ads were underperforming against cheaper competitors.
• Fragmented Messaging – Their story wasn’t being told consistently across digital, OOH, and PR.

Before leaping blindly into making changes, google ads, emails, CRO etc. We needed to understand what Elite Fitness’s members thought about their gyms.

• In-depth analysis of Elite Fitness’s positioning, audience, and competitive landscape through member interviews and surveys.

The feedback revealed more than vanity metrics.
It told us why members choose Elite over other gyms, what they value most, and where the brand’s emotional gravity really sits. These insights became the foundation of their positioning refresh and shaped how messaging, website content, and campaigns were built.

And yes — we made it worth their time. Every member who completed the survey entered a draw to win a free month’s membership. It was a small investment that paid off fast in clarity, focus, and smarter creative.

1. Ask Real Questions
Multiple choice is easy to analyse, but open-text is where the gold is. Real language. Real emotion. Real patterns. That’s where positioning lives.

2. Give People a Reason to Respond
Incentives aren’t a gimmick. They’re a lever. For Elite Fitness, a simple free-month giveaway massively increased completion rates — and gave us a larger, richer dataset.

3. Sell the Survey Like You Sell the Brand
The covering email mattered just as much as the survey itself. Instead of “Please complete our survey,” we led with “Win a Free Month on Us” and made it personal — a real person, a real signature, a real message from the brand.

When you get this right, surveys stop being a chore and start being a strategic superpower.
For Elite Fitness, it wasn’t about vanity data. It was about surfacing the truth their brand could build on.

Once the survey responses were in, our team analysed the data line by line, looking for patterns in language, sentiment, and loyalty drivers. What emerged wasn’t just numbers — it was a clear picture of how members actually see Elite Fitness and what separates it from the competition. Those insights became the foundation for the brand’s new positioning and communication strategy, guiding everything from messaging to member experience design.

• Identified emotional hooks for the premium fitness market: status, community, performance.
• Crafted a bold core campaign message: “Train Like a Leader”
• Unified tone and visuals across digital, OOH, and PR channels.

Building a growth engine that cut through a saturated market and delivered both new member signups and increased engagement.

“We didn’t want another agency promising clicks. We needed a strategic partner who understood our business and could execute across channels.”

– Linh Tran, Board Member at Elite Fitness.

Since activating this campaign in Q2 2019, here are a few of the biggest wins to date:

• A 39% surge in active memberships and a 6.8× ROI on ad spend — all within 90 days.
• 36% increase in average visit frequency.
• 105% lift in lead-to-member conversion rate.
• 6.8X ROI on paid media
• 2.4M PR and OOH impressions

“Your Marketing Rules didn’t just hit our targets — they smashed them. We finally feel like the leader we set out to be.”