Case Study: David Lloyd Leisure grows premium memberships and revenue with The Kite Factory’s brand-response strategy

David Lloyd Leisure grows membership 19% with The Kite Factory

David Lloyd Leisure, a premium health club chain, faced intense competition from low-cost gyms and needed to protect its higher pricing while growing membership. Their challenge was to shift market perception from seeing them as just a gym to understanding they were a premium lifestyle club worth the higher cost. To achieve this, they partnered with The Kite Factory to implement a data-driven marketing strategy.

The Kite Factory executed a brand-response model for David Lloyd Leisure, merging performance marketing with long-term emotional brand building. This approach used data-driven insights to optimize media spend and aligned creative storytelling with performance-focused activations. The results were significant: over seven years, UK membership grew by 19% and the uptake of premium-tier memberships skyrocketed from 10% to 61%. The Kite Factory's strategy also allowed David Lloyd Leisure to increase its monthly fees by 28%—far above the industry average—while growing its revenue market share from 20% to 31%.

David Lloyd Leisure