Carl Daikeler

Beachbody's breakthrough: make the customer the celebrity

Beachbody couldn't afford celebrity endorsements, so after polished 'jacked people' infomercials failed, they spliced in real, messy customer before/after testimonials. The amateur, America's-Funniest-Home-Videos authenticity made the product sell like hotcakes.

“And instead, they try one version of the infomercial where they took a few testimonials that had been sent in from their buyers that said, hey, look at, you know, this was me before and this is me now. And me now wasn't like, didn't look like a Greek god, but just like definitely looked better than the out of shape, overweight person, you know, in the before photo. So they slapped those into the infomercial like real customer testimonials and boom, this thing starts selling like hotcakes.”

Steal thisUse raw, amateur-looking customer testimonials instead of polished celebrity footage; authenticity converts better.