Together we can build an Olympic health legacy

I am still on a high following the great success of the FIA & IMSPA Industry Summit: Winning in 2012 and Beyond, which was held at the Congress Centre in central London this week.

Over 350 delegates from 241 organisations came to discuss, debate and network with their industry peers, and I am happy to say that the venue was buzzing throughout, as we engaged on the subject of working together as an industry to create a health legacy post 2012 Games.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we were lucky enough to be joined by a great selection of high-profile guest speakers from the worlds of sport, fitness, politics, medicine and economics.

Highlights of the day included the brilliant John Inverdale, who expertly hosted proceedings, an announcement from the Public Health Minister Anne Milton about the Government’s national ambition for physical activity, and a fascinating talk from the Chief Medical Officer for the Olympics and Paralympics  Dr Richard Budgett, who provided an insight into looking after our athletes as well as our nation’s health during and after the Games.

Also, for the first time at an FIA event we had a Tweet Wall, which was a tremendous hit. Over 200 Tweets were sent in the run up to and during the event with the hash tag #LegacyReady. I hope that you will continue to keep in touch with me and the FIA team using #FIA and #LegacyReady to tell us how you are preparing for 2012.

The theme of partnership was highlighted by all of the speakers, and I look forward to the FIA collaborating with new partners in both the public and private sectors in the New Year. The next twelve months really will be key for establishing priority status for our sector on the political agenda, and we must all work together to achieve this.

With 40 million adults in the UK still not taking part in just one 30 minute session of exercise each week, we really do have our work cut out; but I am game for the challenge, and I hope that you are to.

The feedback on the Summit from those who attended has been extremely positive, and we look forward to welcoming this year’s delegates and plenty of new ones as well to our next Summit and other key events in 2012.

Reinforcements needed - Supersized (and STRONG) ambulance service

‘Fit and abnormally strong’ are the latest additions to the job spec of the UK ambulance service. Not only so they can respond quickly and tend to the deteriorating health of the nation…. but so they can also transport the obese to hospital. And they WILL need to be taken to hospital…..

I was bemused, if a little concerned this week to hear that the ambulance service have revamped their fleets with heavy duty wheels chairs, stretchers and lifting cushions to transport the ‘larger’ patient to and from hospital. What a sad and somewhat wasteful reflection on the state of the nation’s health and fitness.

Bariatric ambulances have even been introduced into some regions, costing us, the tax payer up to £90,000 a time! And it seems there will need to be more in the pot where that came from - figures point to a 30% increase in hospital admissions for obesity and a 40% increase in bariatric surgery over the last few years.

Surely money would be better spent in prevention as opposed to accommodation?

Treatment and SOLUTIONS versus infrastructure adjustments. Whatever next – larger plane seats, train seats, theatres seats, changing rooms, school desks…? I could go on….

With 24 percent of men and 25 percent of women in the UK now obese, we can’t ignore the problem, but is changing our entire infrastructure really the best solution? Money well spent?

Smoking and alcohol abuse sit alongside obesity as a major cause of disease but we have a smoking ban installed … we have put taxes on alcohol consumption….. THIS is support towards positive behavioural change…. And its working.

Support is key to tackling the obesity problem and our industry is at the forefront of delivering it. The problem is not obesity. The problem is the CAUSE of obesity. I am talking about a lack of physical activity and poor diet. We HAVE to get more people moving and eating better.

We mustn’t sit back and accept the problem…. And we’re not. We are doing great things working with the medical professional through the Joint Consultative Forum, the Government through Change4Life, industry through the Responsibility deal. We have to work together.

Medicine is not the answer. Surgery is not the answer. The solution is at the very heart of our industry. Exercise, diet - energy in and energy out. Support and customer care.

How can we make our offering more appealing to the obese or overweight? Physical activity for all…

The supersized footprint has to stop here.

Making the most of Let’s Dance with Change4life

Following the success of moreactive4life in July and August 2009 the Department of Health has sought the support of the FIA and its members to deliver the next high profile element of the change4life campaign, Let’s Dance with Change4life.

The Let’s Dance campaign gives clubs the opportunity to run an open weekend that is backed by national advertising, complimenting the current trend of dance programmes across various television channels. It also provides a route to market to those who may have stereo typical views of health clubs and gyms.

So how, at a local level, can you ensure you have maximised this opportunity?

Here are a few ideas:
o Begin you’re marketing for the open weekend 4 weeks in advance and increase as the event gets nearer.
o Place posters around your facility – in the reception, changing facilities, Lounge / Café area.
o Combine an offer such as ‘Bring a friend’, ‘Takes two to Tango’ etc
o Advertise whilst people are on hold on the club phone and answer machine.
o Place logos and details onto website homepage with a ‘coming soon’ notice.
o Contact local partners and corporate accounts to promote to employees through desk drops / site visit / intranet.
o Get all staff to wear moreactive4life t-shirts one week prior to open weekend to create awareness.
o Staff in moreactive4life t-shirts can leaflet drop and make a general outreach in shopping / town centres, outside schools, train and bus stations.
o External advertising in local newspapers – local club running national campaign.
o Mail / call previous prospects and personally invite them down to the weekend.
o Mail / call ex-members and personally invite them down to the weekend.
o Decide on ‘special’ membership offers that will be available only on the weekend for people to join including:
- No joining fee
- First month free
- Free personal training session
- Joining pack – t-shirt, sweat towel, water bottle
o Place referral boxes throughout your club 3 weeks prior to the open weekend, offering incentive for members to leave names and numbers such as:
- Free personal training session if they join
- Referral t-shirt, sweat towel, water bottle.

These are just a few ideas to ensure Let’s Dance is another successful campaign for the fitness industry. This will then demonstrate to the Department of Health the value we hold to them in being a delivery partner.

I look forward to hearing other ways in which clubs and centres are marketing the campaign locally.

Richard Blackmore
Sales Membership Director at Fitness Industry Association

Fitness Industry Association

FIA delivering more campaigns

So SIBEC Europe is over for another year and this was the third and busiest I have attended since I began working with the FIA.

Having attended over 20 meetings and made many more contacts it has been incredibly productive to inform both FIA members and those that are not (yet!) of the great work being carried out by the FIA from protecting the industry to delivering more campaigns so we can increase the industries penetration rate.
So what are the next steps?

Well over 500 FIA members are taking part in the Department of Health’s ‘Know Your Limits’ campaign which begins nationally on Monday 16th November. The campaign highlights and educates the general public on the number of units that they consume daily, weekly and how this affects their health. FIA members who have signed up to the campaign have received free collateral packs with information leaflets to use in the clubs and centres as well as t-shirts for staff to wear and educational information they can learn from to deliver to their members.

This to me is a fantastic example of how clubs / centres utilise their membership with the FIA to deliver a Department of Health campaign that works as a retention tool to help add diversity to members programmes and the information they receive. It targets lifestyle changes and position the clubs and centres at the hub of community wellness programmes.

Year 2 of MoreActive4life is also in place to begin January 1st 2010 with the creation of the More Active Health kits from Mend.


The More Active Health kits are a 64 page programme offering 3 exercise and 7 nutritional activities over 6 weeks the general public can engage in their everyday lifestyle. Whether it’s drinking 8 glasses of water or completing 30 minutes of exercise daily the programme is delivered in a way which recognises and promotes behavioural changes.

The More Active Health Kit includes wristbands (I haven’t taken mine off for two weeks and is a great reminder of what I should be doing), key rings, 64 page diary and physical activity wheel. For more information contact Alex Smith.

Delivered over a 6 week period clubs and centres can use the programme to attract new or re-awaken existing members through the change4life branding which research has now shown to have a 90% recall rate.

Richard Blackmore
Sales & Membership Director
Fitness Industry Association

Meeting of minds in Croatia

I must be getting old. I’ve just returned from SIBEC in Croatia and I have added ‘meetings fatigue’ – as opposed to just the ‘traditional’ fatigue usually induced by the inevitable excess which accompanies any industry event to my list of post event ailments.
Twenty meetings in two days is a lot – ask Richard Blackmore who was too ‘fatigued’ .......... but that’s another story.

I met some smart people, some good people, some dreamers and thankfully, no time wasters. But there was one meeting which really excited me, not only because the guys were interesting and had a clear idea of what they wanted and how ‘it would work’, but because the outcome will be a significant milestone for our industry.

The meeting was with Craig McAteer, Chairman of SPORTA (the trade body for the leisure trusts and social enterprises in the culture and leisure sectors) and Ian Kendall another SPORTA executive. True Blaine Dodds sits on the FIA Board and passionately represents the views of the Trusts however, this was probably the first time our two organisations have sat round a table and focused entirely on how we could work together to grow the industry’s market share and consolidate our ‘public health delivery partner’ status.

To give this meeting context Blaine, as part of the FIA Board, focuses on a wide spectrum of issues – from Governance and strategic issues, to financial accountability. However, the last time our two organisations sat around the table and brainstormed more tactical delivery plans was probably when someone at the FIA thought that we needed a SPORTA representative on the Board. That was before Change4Life redefined our industry’s relationship with Government and before there was greater acknowledgement of the role of our industry in the minds and strategies of those responsible for ‘disease prevention’.

Its early days yet but I am really excited by the thought of SPORTA and the FIA really turning our individual talents into a highly effective collective campaign and helping both sets of members achieve their own corporate goals whilst beginning a new era for both our organisations and our industry, just listening to Craig and Ian gave me a great insight on how much we can all learn from there success in delivering quantifiable positive health changes to the heart of communities.

That, I’m afraid is another sign of age ...... being excited about two trade bodies working together.

Is there no hope for me!

David Stalker
COO
Fitness Industry Association

Leisure Industry Week Announcements

LIW looms like the Kilimanjaro peak on my horizon. To all my fellow exhibitors, I hope you have a great LIW – may all your enquiries be great leads. To all visitors, I hope you have a great time and, having spoken to quite a few exhibitors, I know you will walk away with at least three good ideas. This year’s LIW is a big one for us for three major reasons:



1. We will announce the results of the 2009 MoreActive4Life campaign
2. We will unveil our new CMO
3. We will launch the next generation of MoreActive4Life: a proposition developed with the obesity specialists MEND, which will give every FIA member an exciting new consumer proposition and a new tactic to leverage the Change4Life connection.


John Searle, our new CMO, must be unique in our industry having an illustrious medical career behind him, a Level 3 qualification and he was a former arthritis sufferer who cured himself through exercise (and a few drugs). John is critical in the FIA’s/ industry’s medical community ‘engagement plan’. If we can overcome their lack of knowledge of the benefits of “exercise medicine” and perhaps even whatever prejudices they have, then we really will have a 360 Degree solution to the nation’s public health time bomb – a solution comprising the DH, the FIA, programme developers (such as MEND), FIA members and ‘referers’ ie the healthcare community. That would be brilliant for consumers and very lucrative for FIA members (if we get it right).

I am now off, in a packed car, to head up the M40 with mission critical collateral in my keep. God help me if I break, lose, misplace or damage anything..... I will have to suffer the wrath of Hayley, our Events manager .......... for three full days! Day and evening!!


David Stalker, FIA Chief Operating Officer