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Equinox’s new January ad campaign, titled “Want It All,” is rife with images that reek of sex, sex, and more sex.
In fact, the US-based luxury gym’s newest advertisements don’t even include pictures of people working out in a gym. Sure, there’s a woman dressed in white speeding through a dark, ambiguous backdrop wearing funky goggles. And a guy on a dirt bike.
But no one is really working out.
Instead, in the video version of the ad, there’s a flash of a hand crushing citrus fruit, a mouth biting down on pomegranate seeds, a person screaming, a face restrained by fishnet material — and naturally, a bunch of beautiful naked people grasping at each other.
Want Others. Want we. Want us. Because we go further together. To feel the spark of connection, the pulse, the heat, of intimacy. To explore the places where we overlap, and the tensions where we don’t. -Equinox
There are even side by side photos that seem to rather obviously evoke images of genitalia.
The “Want It All” campaign is pretty different from the mostly-wholesome marketing strategies of other big name gyms such as Planet Fitness and LA Fitness.
To be sure, Equinox is a lot more expensive.
An “all access” membership at Equinox’s worldwide locations is $405, plus a $500 initiation fee. By comparison, LA Fitness, the second-most popular gym in the US as of 2022, costs about $60 per month plus a $120 initiation fee — and that’s it’s most expensive option. Planet Fitness memberships start at $10 per month.
The lavish fitness center boasts locations in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and Chicago, among others. Its members have included the likes of Amy Schumer, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Spike Lee, Susan Sarandan, and Chase Crawford, among others — though some left when the owner of the gym’s parent company hosted a fundraiser for then-US president Donald Trump in 2019.
‘Cringey’
Some employees think the ads are weird.
“As an employee of Equinox [for] almost three years I know that there’s no orgies going on here,” one Equinox trainer told Quartz, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their job. “The marketing seems to be a way for the public to see Equinox as some futuristic high status sex club.”
Reddit users responded to the sensual branding, calling it “cringe.”
“They’re just advertising swinger night at the gym,” one joked.
“Get fit for your orgies at Equinox,” quipped another.
Equinox declined to comment.
But nothing new
Past Equinox marketing strategies have been similarly…“bold.” In 2023, its ad campaign, jokingly dubbed “We Don’t Speak January,” banned new members from joining during the first month of the year.
Its 2016 “Commit to Something” campaign was incredibly sensual, too, with one ad featuring an orgy, and another showing a culty-looking bunch of blonde-haired white people wearing white in the woods.
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