In this episode of the SLN Podcast, John Peters is joined by Jean-Michel Fournier, CEO of Les Mills Media. Jean-Michel is no stranger to health and technology as he’s held senior roles with companies like HP, GE, United Health, and even founding a successful startup BitGym. Jean-Michel spoke about the consumerization of fitness and how his company is serving its communities through rich and engaging content. He also teased who will be sharing the stage with at the up-and-coming Fitness and Active Brand Summit.
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Podcast Highlights
4:10 – Connection is critical in fitness: “Connection is critical and what people have been missing, what they have been craving has been the connection with their personal trainer, with their fitness instructor, and connecting with the energy of a fitness structure. And they have to in some ways to relearn about how to exercise differently and to adapt to the situation.”
5:05 – Helping people find a routine: “Many are not taking care of themselves in these groups. We need coaching to help them to be sure we provide a maximum service to help them to go back to their routine and exercise on a regular basis.“
7:20 – Adapting to digital: “Now that we are at home and most of the clubs are closing, we had to really adapt to the situation and create connection, leveraging digital capabilities. So live streaming has been number one.”
8:10 – Investing in community: “We invested significantly into our communities where people feel supported. It’s a very safe and private environment where people can really share the emotion, and they can really get the support that they need to go through this difficult time.”
9:02 – Creating diversified content: “Diversity has been more critical than ever. How do you create very diversified content where people are able to really get through their journey? So for us, this has been a very important element and people really enjoy the diversity the Les Mills content.”
11:10 – Creation of content starts with music: “People are very engaged in the programs, supported by music. Music is very important and actually the creation of our content starts with music. So people when they engage with our content they love the music that has been selected during the workout.”
12:45 – Creating emotion in videos: “So for us, we still believe that when you have the right level of video production setting, uh, you are able to capture better emotion.”
17:12 – We need more competition: “We need more competition. It’s very important. I don’t know if you’ve seen the last survey from the government regarding obesity. Obesity in the US is still increasing more than 40% of adults are overweight or obese.”
21:20 – Exercise and connecting with family: “We are pushing for people to exercise more but at the same time to connect better with their own family or their own environment.”
22:40 – Topics for the 2020 Fitness and Active Brand Summit: “We’re going to really focus on accelerating growth, talking about the investment in the omni-channel or fitness boom, and really looking at omni-channel strategy and what that means for the consumer and industry.”
