Inside the making of Peloton’s viral Hudson Williams ad

Jumping on a Peloton for a workout is a great way to get the heart pumping. But you can get the same effect from watching its newest ad campaign.

The brand’s latest ad, which dropped last Tuesday, a continuation of its “Let Yourself Go” marketing platform, stars Heated Rivalry actor Hudson Williams dancing, strutting, and working out to David Bowie’s “Fame” in an all-white short-shorts-and-tank-top getup. The spot was directed by Bethany Vargas, whose past work includes Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” music video and Gap’s “Better in Denim” campaign, and it is running in the US and Canada across channels including TV, OTT, online video, social, and digital out-of-home.

It’s one of CMO Megan Imbres’s first big projects at Peloton after joining from Apple last summer, and she said it’s all about evoking big feelings and influencing culture, a favorite goal for many CMOs.

How top marketers go about involving their brands in cultural moments differs, but there’s one method that’s proving popular for at least a couple of brands this year: pairing one of the Heated Rivalry stars with a celebrated director, putting them in tank tops that show off their biceps, and letting the internet do the rest.

“I knew it was going to connect,” Imbres told Marketing Brew. “I did not think it was going to connect at the level that it has.”

Renaissance man

When Imbres started at Peloton in July, she was quickly tasked with putting together a new brand campaign that would roll out in October. The resulting work, the first iteration of “Let Yourself Go,” was meant to evoke a feeling of joy associated with fitness.

Usually, “it’s always this moan-and-groan moment,” Imbres said of fitness messaging. “It’s just such a trope. I wanted it to be really celebratory.”

For the next addition to the platform, Imbres and her team started with the idea of depicting real Peloton instructors—and not just on the screens of the brand’s fitness equipment. In the spot, Williams works out with Adrian Williams through the screen of his treadmill before being coached by Tunde Oyeneyin in person.

After they landed on the instructors, Imbres and her team started brainstorming for the lead. The Peloton team “wanted someone multifaceted” to represent the various styles of training Peloton offers, Imbres said, and Williams was a “no-brainer.”

Fans have noted the many sides of Williams as he’s skyrocketed to fame: His Heated Rivalry character is often subdued, while Williams himself tends to be more boisterous in interviews. The Peloton ad and singer Laufey’s “Madwoman” music video, two of his most recent projects, have drawn comparisons to High School Musical characters Troy Bolton and Sharpay Evans.

Song and dance

It’s unlikely the Peloton team is the only marketing org throwing Williams’s name around in brainstorming sessions, and Imbres knows it. He’s “someone who just did a Balenciaga campaign, someone who’s really high-fashion and being very choiceful about who he works with,” she said. On top of that, talent doesn’t come cheap.

“We don’t have these giant budgets…and I’m also trying to be somewhat mindful, being a first-time CMO, of how much we’re spending on these things,” Imbres said.

Williams, luckily, was already a fan of Peloton, and Imbres told us he liked the campaign concept when the brand team pitched it to him through his manager. The creative approach, though, was something of a risk, since it relied heavily on choreography. “We did not know whether he was going to be able to dance,” Imbres said. Real fans know that Williams learned to ice skate in just a couple of weeks, so perhaps it’s no surprise that he pulled it off.

“He’s such a liberated, flowing person, and so he just fell into it really naturally,” Imbres said.

The marketing push comes at a key moment for Peloton, which reported a 3% dip in Q4 revenue compared to the year prior, connected to a “weak holiday quarter” that also contributed to a stock drop earlier this year. A day after the ad was released, though, the company’s stock jumped.

More than a feeling

While Peloton is data-driven when it comes to media planning and analytics, there was “no stated goal” for the campaign with Williams, Imbres said. While her team is tracking standard metrics like brand perception, she said, her real objective is getting Peloton back in the zeitgeist.

“It is a feeling,” Imbres said. “You feel it, and you see everyone talking about it. That’s what I live for. That’s why I wake up in the morning, to try to make a connection with culture in a way where everyone’s excited, and happy, and they want to be a part of it. There’s an intangible piece to really good marketing and campaign development that is not just a number—it’s something that you feel connected to.”

If social media chatter is any indication, “connected” is certainly one way to describe how people feel about the ad. Actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson commented, “I need more information,” on Peloton’s teaser for the campaign, which also received comments from a litany of brands, including Dunkin’, Cinnabon, Steve Madden, and Hers.

“I have nothing appropriate to say,” a comment from Stubhub’s account reads.

Now that the full ad is out, some users aren’t just hyperfixating on Williams, Imbres pointed out—they’re also talking about Peloton. On the brand’s Instagram post of the ad, which has more than 14,000 reposts and 9,600 comments, one creator commented, “I literally haven’t turned on my pelly this year and this changed that.”