Tonal’s Epic Ad Is a Departure for the Fitness Category

Tonal, a smart home gym looking for a holiday sales boost, has dropped an epic long-form commercial shot entirely in black and white and set in the Victorian era.

A major departure for the fitness category—with inspiration coming from classic sports marketing and indie auteurs like Michel Gondry—Tonal’s 2-minute hero ad contrasts its pricey tech-enabled product with the crude kettle bells, battle ropes, and dandy horse bicycles of yore.

The message: This ain’t your ancestor’s workout.

The campaign, dubbed “Future of Fitness,” comes from Quality Experience, a newly formed agency that recently debuted its inaugural effort, “Make Something That Means Something” for Shutterfly. The shop landed the Tonal business without a competitive pitch, becoming the agency of record in late summer.

Tonal was looking for “a clear narrative” to play up the connected fitness brand’s points of difference, “making the product approachable and removing barriers to adoption,” Meg Douglass, vice president of marketing and alum of Huge and Grey Group, told ADWEEK. “We wanted it to be bold, knowing we would launch at a noisy time.”

Along with an overhaul of the brand’s visual assets, Quality Experience developed the new strategy and marketing platform, “Power Progress,” and the tagline, “Stop working out in the past.”

Though old-school barbells and row machines are still gym staples, they pale in sophistication when compared to Tonal’s personalized digital tech and AI-powered coaching, creatives said.

“Some of these exercise methods have barely evolved since the Victorian era—they’re archaic,” Ari Weiss, the agency’s creative chairman, told ADWEEK. “We took that insight and came up with a solution perspective: leave the antiquated workouts behind.”

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