It’s resolution time and London is abuzz with street runners, gym offers and zumba classes. But the inevitable happens some time around April and, as social schedules pick up, gym attendance peters out. Motivation decreases. Yet contracts live on.

This basic model is the lifeblood of gyms around the world. Get them in on offer, make them sign on the dotted line, bill them monthly. Add to that a poor reputation as a gym brand and you have both a branding and customer service quandary to solve.

Such was the case with Fitness First. The capital’s punching bag of gym chains went into administration in 2012. It’s immediate saviour was Oaktree Capital and new CEO Andy Coslett. The Clearing’s director of consulting, Richard Buchanan, then talked through this problem over tea with Coslett in late 2012. January of last year began an intense period of research into customer behaviour and expectations of their fitness centre.

“We needed to build a proposition that was much more customer friendly and that was much more about service and experience,” Buchanan says.

The solution was found in technology and a new approach to the way a gym is laid out. The new branding, evoking a sense of a high-performance sporting apparel brand, serves to revitalise a dull, overly-corporate former brand.

“People are uneducated about fitness. They don’t want to ask and they don’t really want to be told,” Buchanan adds. Thus The Clearing built interactive screens and apps into the rebrand to allow customers to plan their workouts virtually thus making the experience both rewarding and variable.

“It you have multiple points of contact,” Buchanan says. “And keep people’s workouts fresh and exciting, that delivers service with a personal tough. It’s the little bits of dialogue and conversation that we really think will make a difference to people.”

The brand has a ways to go yet. The rebrand has been received well but viewed with a latent cynicism. It’s up to the service and experience at Fitness First to make good on the promise the bold and fresh rebrand offers. “The challenge is to prove to people that they are changing and that they’re changing for the better,” Buchanan says.