BEND KNEES WHEN LIFTING:: Brandbuilding for Bodybuilding.com

Bodybuilding is about results. At least that’s what all the trade pubs tell you with all the tanned and oiled hypertrophic muscle fetishizing going on. What’s lost is all the willpower, agony, and repetition that goes into transforming one’s body.

Bodybuilding.com approached Drake Cooper to help launch a key initiative through a national print campaign. A key challenge was to help grow Bodybuilding.com’s customer base without alienating its core audience, the competing bodybuilder.

Besides being the largest online sports nutrition company, Bodybuilding.com has really built its success by celebrating the bodybuilder. One aspect of this has been fostering a large, networked community called BodySpace on the site. Here, over 650,000 people connect, sharing workout tips and nutrition regimens. But it doesn’t stop there, the Bodybuilding.com site puts its people front and center by featuring their transformation stories online.

Spending some time reading the transformation stories, it becomes apparent that many Bodybuilders are everyday people overcoming amazing challenges to get into optimum health. It becomes clear that what is really transformed is not just the physical, but all aspects of life.

This motivation is what bodybuilders bring to the gym and when it comes right down to it, this willpower is found right there in every rep. It’s this insight that led to the brand idea of “LIFT LIFE.” This direction allowed the ad campaign to tap into and celebrate the LIFT LIFE, speaking to all audiences—from hardcore bodybuilders, gym junkies, athletes, active exercisers, and the emerging MMA crowd.

The LIFT LIFE gives voice to the willpower that says: “Lift, press, curl, pull until you can’t do one more rep. And then do one more rep. Half-hearted is half-crazy. Don’t show up, just to give up.”

Each ad features BodySpace and Bodybuilding.com bodybuilders in real-life environments. The stunning photography of Andy Anderson captured the LIFT LIFE story across all segments from compelling transformations to the competitive core crowd of bodybuilders.

The immediate feedback from the Bodybuilding.com community has been overwhelmingly positive and reconfirms the core purpose of the Bodybuilding.com brand—to inspire and celebrate everyone who lives the LIFT LIFE.

Look for the ads in major national publications like Shape, GQ, Men’s Fitness, Oxygen, Muscle & Fitness Hers, Flex, Playboy, UFC, and more. For more of the ads in the series, see Andy Anderson’s featured portfolio on LIFT LIFE.

Big Ups to our real-life, LIFT LIFE Models: Jamie Eason, Christina Vargas, Ashley Schutz, Sean Sarantos, Kizzito Ejam, Parker Cote.

Shout Out: Ryan DeLuca, Tanya Vaughan, Jennifer Hetherington, Andy Anderson, Michael Perez, Jennifer Diehl, Cindy Whitehead, Jennie Myers, Dylan Amundson, Sean Young, Karma Jones, Joe Quatrone, Dennis Budell.