Coup for Thompson in L.A. : Agency Will Try to Add Muscle to Vic Tanny Ads
It is the ad agency that made Cher’s belly button and singer Sheena Easton’s abdomen the focus of commercials for Holiday Spa Health Clubs. On Wednesday, it got a $25-million assignment to tone up ads for more fitness centers, including Vic Tanny.
Since 1974, the Los Angeles office of J. Walter Thompson has handled most of the advertising for Health & Tennis Corp., which locally owns Holiday Spa Health Clubs and 315 health clubs nationwide.
On Wednesday, Health & Tennis Corp.--owned by Bally Manufacturing Corp. of Chicago--announced that it is handing the J. Walter Thompson office the rest of the fitness firm’s advertising. That would include ads for Vic Tanny, Scandinavian and U.S. Health facilities in the East and Midwest, the company said.
Consolidating the Effort
Outside of the big automotive and film industry advertisers, the $65-million account represents one of the largest handled by a West Coast ad agency.
Why the change? Simply put, said Arthur Quinby, director of marketing at Health & Tennis, the company wanted to put its advertising “under one cost-efficient roof.” Some of the Health & Tennis commercials were previously created or placed on television by several mid-sized East Coast ad agencies.
Ad agency consolidation aside, the company says its basic ad strategy won’t change. Health & Tennis will continue to link its image with big name celebrities.
Celebrity Approach
In the highly competitive health club industry--which has seen a number of failures and bankruptcies in recent years--Health & Tennis has relied heavily on the help of paid celebrities to convince consumers that the company has staying power.
In one of the chain’s TV commercials, filmed in an interview-like format, Cher comments, “Excuses . . . don’t mean anything to your thighs, OK? Excuses are not going to lift up your butt.”
Other celebrities have starred in the ads, as well, including model Heather Locklear who discusses how exercising makes her feel sexy. “Right now,” Locklear says in one commercial, “I’m feeling very, very sexy.” She then proceeds to pull down a portion of her T-shirt and expose some of her shoulder to the camera.
Although Health & Tennis is headquartered in Chicago, most of the company’s employees work out of its Los Angeles office, and the bulk of its financial and marketing operations are handled out of Southern California. That is one reason the company says it has handed all of its advertising to a Los Angeles agency.
But Burt Manning, chairman and chief executive of J. Walter Thompson Co., says there’s another reason. “The stuff works, so they want us to do more,” said Manning, who works out of the agency’s headquarters in New York, but was visiting Thompson’s Los Angeles office on Wednesday.
With this additional business, Thompson’s Los Angeles office becomes one of a handful of Los Angeles ad agencies to post more than $200 million in annual billings. “The whole idea of the campaign,” said James K. Agnew, general manager of Thompson’s Los Angeles office, “is to make these spokespeople more than talking heads.”
