A Healthy Brand

It was a classic meeting of the minds.

In 1992, Life Time Fitness founder Bahram Akradi set out to create a new standard for health and fitness centers—one that emphasized a healthy way of life, not just a healthy body. “Bahram and his team wanted to break the mold and create a category-redefining example of what a health and fitness center could be,” says Jason Thunstrom, director of corporate communications for Eden Prairie–based Life Time, which now operates 60 centers in 13 states.

Nine years later, local marketing consultant Pilar Gerasimo was asked by Life Time’s custom-publishing vendor to propose a brand-worthy magazine for Life Time Fitness members, one that would replace Life Time’s existing publication, which essentially was a member newsletter. “For the first time in my life, I got this fun opportunity as a creative to sort of ‘blue sky’ it,” recalls Gerasimo, who at the time was editor-in-chief of ICON, the magazine of the American Society of Interior Designers. Gerasimo produced a 40-page creative blueprint for what she describes as a “convention-busting magazine,” which would stand apart from the existing array of health and fitness magazines in much the same way Akradi’s centers differed from his competitors—by addressing the needs of the whole person, not only the physical body.

"We should not sell ourselves down the river in the interests of a $10,000 ad, if it's going to put the larger brand proposition in danger."

“I knew that the typical Life Time Fitness member tended to be college-educated and successful. These are not just fitness nuts. Of course, there definitely are people in the organization that fall into the peripheral categories of complete fitness enthusiast or elite athlete or bodybuilder, but most of them are regular people with jobs and kids and houses,” Gerasimo says. “So our magazine would promise them something that most of the other magazines out there couldn’t really deliver, which was that we’ll treat you as a whole person. We’ll treat your health and fitness challenges and your goals and desires as part of your bigger life plan. We won’t promise you a bunch of crazy stuff overnight. We won’t insult your intelligence by making hyped-up fantasy miracle-cure promises we can’t keep and that you don’t care about anyway. The fact is, most moms and dads don’t need six-pack abs—they just don’t.”