How The Body Coach Took Control of its Growing Brand

After successfully launching via YouTube in 2015, fitness brand The Body Coach shifted gears in 2020 to build an audience on its own terms with a video fitness and nutrition experience powered by Brightcove technology.

Owning an Audience

Founded by Joe Wicks, The Body Coach is a brand that has built a culture of fitness and healthy eating for millions of people around the world. Joe Wicks has been called “the UK’s PE teacher” after his workouts skyrocketed in popularity during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since its launch, YouTube had been The Body Coach’s sole video delivery platform for workout content, and with more than 300 million views and 2.78 million subscribers on YouTube, The Body Coach knew their audience and the value of their content. Furthermore, The Body Coach has been able to keep users engaged by providing a tailored service for each subscriber, from workout regimes that increase in difficulty to personalized meal plans.

By 2020, The Body Coach was ready to harness the power of its content and reach its audience directly, having outgrown the brand control limitations of free platforms. As part of their OTT subscription service, The Body Coach selected Brightcove to power the live and on-demand video experience.

Making Moves

To match the user experience, The Body Coach needed a mobile app that would not only keep users coming back for the singular Body Coach workout, but would also reflect the brand’s high production standards.

The cornerstone of the app experience would be the on-demand and live video content that had made The Body Coach so popular in the first place, supported by Brightcove security technology. Hosting hundreds of on-demand videos meant having complete control of the user experience and delivering compelling video content. Users can also join live fitness sessions that are delivered securely with Brightcove’s livestreaming capabilities, where they can work out virtually with thousands of others on the app.

Protecting the Brand

Video’s profitability makes it particularly alluring to pirates, which can cost brands billions of dollars in lost revenue alone — not to mention the effects on brand image. While piracy through OTT apps is low, any subscription service can attract pirates.

The Body Coach partnered with digital product studio ustwo to bring its fitness experience to digital life. To match the piracy risk, ustwo used three Brightcove security methods. The first was HLS encryption. The Body Coach brand would be protected by end-to-end encryption that ensures the video could not be downloaded or shared to other platforms. Then, token authentication and playback authorization would work together to ensure that the right person was watching the right content, helping The Body Coach deliver a highly personalized mobile app experience.

Results

With more than 24,000 reviews of the iOS app averaging 4.8 out of 5, The Body Coach launched to commercial success and critical acclaim.

“The app is amazing value for money and beats repeating the same old YouTube workouts,” wrote social media strategist Lauren Smith in Women's Health UK.

“Our app provides a premium experience, with lots of accessible, informative, and fun fitness video content,” said Saagar Bains, Head of Product at The Body Coach. “Having a partner like Brightcove throughout has been great. We’ve scaled smoothly across geographies without any problems, and we’ve worked with Brightcove to quickly identify and integrate a captioning partner from the Brightcove Marketplace. This has allowed us to hit our accessibility goals for this year much faster.”