Bally Total Fitness, Dairy Queen Star in The Apprentice
Bally Total Fitness is giving consumers some additional incentives to try out its health clubs: a free class and a T-shirt.
The health club became the first brand featured in the fourth season of NBC’s The Apprentice under a branded entertainment deal with Mark Burnett Productions. During the Sept. 22 episode, contestants vying for Donald Trump’s apprenticeship had to create the ultimate group fitness class.
Team Excel, the all-male group, won the task. Bally Total Fitness is extending the offer to members and non-members alike to try the class for free. The class designed by Trump’s team incorporates strength training and cardiovascular exercise with Pilates, yoga and Kwando.
Non-members can download a free, one-day pass online at Ballytotalfitness.com/apprentice through Oct. 9. As an added bonus, consumers who redeem the pass will get a “Billionaire in Training” T-shirt (while supplies last).
“We understand that it can be difficult for people to find time to workout,” said Bally CEO Paul Toback in a statement. “That’s why we challenged the teams from The Apprentice to work with our fitness experts to create a short but powerful class that is perfect for people with busy lifestyles.”
Consumers who redeem the pass will also be entered into the “Train Like a Billionaire” sweepstakes for a chance to win a Trump-style weekend in New York. The top winner gets two tickets to see the live finale of The Apprentice, $800 in spending money and two one-year memberships to Bally Total Fitness including 10 free personal training sessions. Consumers can also log on to Ballytotalfitness.com/apprentice to enter.
The sweepstakes runs through Oct. 9. Online materials support.
Separately, American Dairy Queen is drumming up interest of its upcoming appearance on the show with A $2.5 million campaign centered on DQ’s own search for a Blizzard apprentice. The contest winner gets a $50,000 signing bonus, commercial appearances and a chance to create new Blizzard flavors.
The QSR launched the contest as one part of a multi-layered campaign to tout Blizzard and pump membership for its Blizzard Fan Club, said Michael Keller, chief brand manager at DQ. Some 600,000 consumers have joined the club since its launch in April.
And in an Apprentice first, Dairy Queen is leveraging its tie to the show more than two weeks before the episode airs.
“We want to delight our Blizzard Fan Club members, given their loyalty to the brand,” Keller said. “We want to reward Blizzard Fan Club members and leverage BlizzardFanClub.com as our platform for building a pretty significant relationship with a large number of Blizzard users.”
The Apprentice will feature the QSR’s Blizzard brand during the Oct. 13 episode, in which teams compete to build a marketing campaign for Blizzard. To generate interest in the show, DQ on Monday broke its Now Hiring! Become DQ’s Blizzard Apprentice contest; entrants complete tasks at Blizzardfanclub.com to vie for prizes.
During the first round, contestants submit a photo and 100-word essay showing their passion for Blizzard; judges will choose 25 candidates to move on to the second task, producing a two- or three-minute video about the Blizzard in a TV spot, speech, rap, song or other performance art. The top five submissions will be posted at the fan club site, where fan club members vote for their favewho’ll be named the first-ever Blizzard apprentice on Nov. 4.
The winner and three guests fly to Los Angeles to film a Blizzard commercial starring the winner (to air nationally next year). The winner later travels to Hawaii for Dairy Queen’s franchisee exposition and to its Minneapolis headquarters to help develop new Blizzard flavors.
All 25 semi-finalists get free Blizzards for a year; each posted Web finalist gets $1,000. Fan club members who vote get a buy one, get one free Blizzard coupon.
“The notion of being able to reward our Blizzard Fan Club members with this type of [promotion] and for one lucky member to get this type of job is kind of cool,” Keller said.
The contest runs through Oct. 11, with online and in-store support, via Los Angeles-based RMPC. Fishbowl, Inc., Alexandria, VA, handles Web site content.
