Sports Nutrition is a pretty abstract group of products. This Case Study shows how our customers Body Attack Sports Nutrition, Gigas Nutrition and Rocka Nutrition each utilized User Generated Content to establish an individual and personal brand image that clearly positions them in the constantly growing market.
The Situation
A conscious diet and an active lifestyle are on trend. This has in parts also been fueled by the increasing use of social media over the past few years. Numerous fitness bloggers and influencers document their daily workouts on social networks, share recipes for their favorite superfoods and proudly present their well-trained bodies. In turn, this inspires others to do the same, which is why the community of fitness enthusiasts continues to grow.
Over the years, sports nutrition has slipped from the small niche around body builders into the middle of everyday life for many, especially young people. In 2016, the global market volume for sports nutrition was at $28.37 billion. Until 2022, an increase to over $45 billion is estimated. At the same time, the number of people enrolled in gyms in Germany has tripled since 2003 and today stands at almost 11 million. A large part of this is made up by young people between the ages of 14-29 years.
With the rapidly growing market, competitive pressure among brands that offer fitness food and sports nutrition has been increasing immensely as well. As a consequence, authentic and personal marketing is shifting more and more into focus for sports nutrition brands.
The Challenge
Fitness food is a very abstract group of products. New customers often find it difficult to make the right choice among the many brands, let alone the multitude of products. Many get lost somewhere along the way between whey and casein protein, pre-workout shakes, post-workout shakes, diet products and weight-gaining remedies. In addition, product design rarely offers a unique selling proposition in the field of sports nutrition. Especially protein powder is often packed in almost identical plastic containers.
Our customers Body Attack Sports Nutrition, Rocka Nutrition and Gigas Nutrition, consequently all faced the same challenge: personalizing product images and creating a clear brand image that ultimately helps customers to identify with the brand and eventually find the sports nutrition supplier that best suits them.
The Solution – Gigas Nutrition
The Sports Nutrition Brand Gigas Nutrition was founded in 2017, and carries nutritional products like its very own Viking Whey for »strong and invincible Nordic warriors«. The latest series of products is inspired by the Roman Praetorians and contains products such as the Legion Joints, which are designed to help with joint issues. Consequently, images featured under the branded hashtag #gigasnutrition mainly show customers who are characterized by great strength and fighting spirit. The pictures, adapted to the overall mood, are mainly dark and undersaturated.
Through the integration of User Generated Content, Gigas Nutrition is now able to bring the trials of Vikings and Romans told on their product detail pages to life. This on one hand manifests the brand image, while on the other strengthening the sense of community among Gigas Nutrition customers. Consumers who identify themselves with the traditional fighter- narrative feel like part of a bigger picture when they see their content featured on the brand’s website. This also contributes to customer loyalty.
The Solution – Rocka Nutrition
A look at customer content created by the Rocka Nutrition community provides a stark contrast. Matching the bright pink and blue signature product designs of the brand founded in 2015, the pictures are also bright, friendly and playful. The customer community mainly consists of young adults who are rather focussed on a well-defined body than gaining a large mass of muscles.
Rocka Nutrition product lines, like Yum Yum and Smacktastic, offer extravagant flavors like Strawberry White Chocolate, Cinnamon and Sugar or Kiddy Chocolate Choco Chip, obviously targeting an entirely different audience than Gigas Nutriton. The respective UGC Galleries embedded online significantly underline this difference.
In addition, Rocka Nutrition offers even more inspiration with product-specific galleries on the respective detail pages in their webshop, which each illustrate the many possible uses of Rocka products.
The Solution – Body Attack Sports Nutrition
In the middle of these two extremes is where our customer Body Attack Sports Nutrition fits in. The brand has been out on the field since 1994 and is characterized by straightforward, simple product designs. The content created by consumers of Body Attack Sports Nutrition also tends to be straightforward and clean in terms of aesthetics and of high-quality. Since Body Attack has been on the market for over 20 years, the sports nutrition supplier has long established a clear brand image. Nevertheless, the User Generated Content integrated on the website supports new customers in classifying the brand among its many competitors.
Body Attack Sports Nutrition is the leading online shop and largest store chain for sports nutrition and diet supplies in Germany. In order to maintain this status, the brand actively invests in its customer community through working with squarelovin.
»UGC is authentic and that’s the most important point. Our customers show how they use the products in everday life – not because they are being paid for it but because they are convinced of our brand. This serves social proof to potential new customers and helps them with their buying decisions. On top of this, our customers also benefit from our use of UGC, as we provide a platform for them to be seen on our website.«
Christoph Heinrichs | Online Marketing Manager | Body Attack Sports Nutrition
The Result
All three brands stand for high-quality fitness food, passion for sports and a healthy lifestyle. To establish a clear brand image, they all decided to focus on what sets them apart the most: their customer community. Each website now features a teaser-gallery created by squarelovin, which gives insight in the content that accumulates under the respective branded hashtags. Looking at content created by consumers of each brand, the differences between them become a lot clearer than with the plain product images.
Even though Body Attack Sports Nutrition, Rocka Nutrition and Gigas Nutrition operate in the same market segment and offer similar product ranges, all three Sports Nutrition Brands address very different target groups. The use of UGC helps them to focus on this as a unique selling proposition and thereby establish their place on the market.
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