Overview
I co-founded a fitness startup called MyWorkouts while completing my Master’s in Digital Social Media. As Head of Creative Strategy, Design, and Education, I defined the brand identity, developed the creative strategy, and designed the educational content system that introduced users to the platform.
The product centered around a proprietary exercise database where each movement was tagged by muscle groups, equipment, and experience level. This allowed users to automatically generate customized workouts or search our workout library based on constraints such as equipment availability, injuries, training preferences, and time.
The Challenge
MyWorkouts had a strong technical foundation but lacked the strategic framework needed to attract and guide users to its core functionality. The challenge was transforming a complex workout generation tool into an approachable experience for beginners.
This required developing a clear visual identity and a brand voice that resonated with new fitness users, differentiating MyWorkouts within the saturated fitness content market. That voice was then applied to an acquisition funnel designed to introduce users to the platform and guide them toward its core features.
The Goals
- Establish a recognizable brand identity and visual system
- Define a clear brand voice that felt approachable and educational
- Create a content system that addressed the needs of beginner fitness users and acted as an acquisition funnel for the exercise search and workout generator
The Solution
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1. Brand Identity Design
- Develop a comprehensive visual identity system including logo, typography, and color palette
- Establish the brand voice and tone for all content and communications
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2. Creative Strategy
- Build an SEO-driven content ecosystem designed to attract beginner fitness users through organic search
- Organize that content into a funnel that directs users toward the MyWorkouts workout generation and search tools
The Process
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1. Research & Discovery
- I conducted 20+ interviews with individuals interested in beginning their fitness journey but unsure how to begin
- These interviews identified recurring barriers including intimidation from bodybuilding culture, confusion from conflicting fitness advice, and a lack of clear guidance.
- They also showed trends in fitness goals, which revolved around changing body composition.
- I positioned MyWorkouts as an unintimidating, educational voice to present the ideas around bodybuilding (muscle growth and fat loss).
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2. Design Execution
- I designed a visual identity system for MyWorkouts, including a logo with smooth and rounded shapes.
- I curated a cool-toned color palette to create a welcoming environment and selected simple typography optimized for clarity across educational content.
- I applied that design across a homepage, exercise search page, two educational journey pages, workout pages, and exercise pages.
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3. Creative Strategy
- I designed an initial growth strategy based on building organic traffic through SEO-driven educational content, and managed a team of contract workers in writing 20+ SEO-optimized blog posts revolving around muscle growth and fat loss.
- Each blog posts as entry points into the MyWorkouts ecosystem. The blog posts directed users to the overarching journey (Muscle Growth or Fat Loss), and the Journeys directed users to the proprietary workout search and workout generator.
- All workout and exercise pages were designed for SEO performance, incorporating targeted keywords to improve search visibility and strengthen internal linking.
The Outcome
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1. Resonant Brand Identity
- User feedback confirmed that the MyWorkouts brand successfully differentiated itself from the typical brand common in the fitness and bodybuilding space.
- Users responded positively to the approachable voice and structured educational guidance.
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2. Organic Growth Through Search
- Within approximately one year, the website reached over 14,000 monthly visitors, maintained more than 1,000 weekly active users, and generated the majority of its traffic through organic search.
- Several blog posts and exercise database pages ranked within the top five Google results for targeted keywords related to beginner fitness.
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3. Successful Funding
- Organic traffic growth provided early proof of concept, helping the company secure over $15K in a first round of friends-and-family funding.
Post Mortem
in the Age of AI
If I were establishing MyWorkout's brand today, modern AI tools would significantly accelerate research, content production, and audience analysis.
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1. Brand Positioning & Audience Research
- AI tools such as Google Gemini could be used to analyze large volumes of conversations across Reddit, Instagram, Quora, and TikTok in order to surface common beginner fitness questions and barriers and identify recurring user frustrations around starting a fitness routine aimed to change body composition
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2. Custom GPT as Central Brand Guide
- ChatGPT could function as an internal collaborator for brand voice and content creation for outlining blog posts and organizing educational content.
- I would equip it with scientific research on muscle growth, fat loss, sleep, and recovery, as well as transcripts of podcasts from trusted fitness educators such as Jeff Nippard, Joe Delaney, and Dr. Mike Israetel, and a brand playbook for MyWorkouts.
- From there, the custom GPT could help keep a consistent brand voice across educational materials, initial blog post outlines, and help polish existing articles in order to maintain a consistent brand voice grounded in trustworthy information.
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3. AI-Assisted Content Creation
- AI tools could generate visuals using services like https://www.napkin.ai/ to embed into the blog posts, breaking down more complicated concepts such as progressive overload, hypertrophy training, and recovery cycles for our beginner audiences
