BeachBody's Infomercial Success
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A story about how BeachBody's founder Carl Daikeler built a successful fitness empire through innovative infomercial marketing.
"BeachBody was started by Carl Daikeler, who's worth about $600 million and is the king of infomercials and at-home fitness. He created 8-minute abs, inspired by Buns of Steel. In the early 90s, he raised $500,000 from friends and family to test 5 fitness products.
He started by partnering with Tony Horton, a celebrity trainer who worked with Bruce Springsteen and Hollywood stars. The company name came when he was walking on the beach in LA one day - he thought of 'BeachBody,' ran home, checked BeachBody.com was available, and grabbed it.
The initial infomercials failed because they just showed super fit people talking about getting jacked. Then they tried something different - they included real customer testimonials showing before and after photos. These weren't perfect transformations, just regular people who looked notably better than their before photos. The infomercials started selling like hotcakes.
His core insight was making the testimonials look authentic, almost like America's Funniest Home Videos - people working out at home with their cats jumping on them, plants dying in the background, barely holding their balance. Then showing their transformation 90 days later.
What made them different was while everyone else was selling equipment like ThighMaster and Bowflex, BeachBody made a promise: do our program for 90 days, get these results. Today they do $1 billion in sales with 10% EBITDA, making most of their profit from their Shakeology nutrition products."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.