Amazon Sets Its Sights on The Wellness Industry With New Partnership

Looks like Amazon has big plans for the wellness industry. Last week, the eCommerce giant announced a new partnership with Planet Fitness to promote its Halo View wellness tracker and, hopefully, gain access to insights on Gen Z consumers.

In a recent article, Marketing Dive reports that this comes just on the heels of the brand shutting down its Amazon Care business "due to a lack of momentum just one month after acquiring primary care network One Medical for $3.9 billion." Seems like instead of leaving the wellness industry alone for now, Amazon is just changing its tactics.

Clearly, this new partnership with Fitness Planet signals that "the e-commerce behemoth (is) sinking its teeth further into the wellness space" — and the setup is quite extensive. First, for a limited time, new Planet Fitness Black Card holders will receive a free Halo View wellness tracker and a year-long membership, if they sign up between November 7th-15th.

But that's not all, the partnership also has a social media element to it in the form of a TikTok challenge — which is aimed at attracting the attention of Gen Z consumers.

The partners are offering up $500 Amazon gift cards to ten creators who add a video of themselves dancing to TikTok — but they have to tag Planet Fitness and add the hashtag #GlowUsYourMoves. So far, only three videos have been uploaded with the hashtag — though one is labeled as an ad promoting the challenge. Seems like TikTok-loving Zoomers haven’t been convinced yet.

Clearly, Amazon is looking to gather insights on Gen Z — an audience that Planet Fitness has started to actively court post-pandemic. In its Q3 earnings call, CEO Chris Rondeau “pointed to the young demographic as a major opportunity point” and shared that “Gen Z was the smallest segment of its user base pre-pandemic, but is now the second largest group of members.”

So, if Amazon can get Gen Z consumers to wear the Halo View trackers, they can gather incredibly important insights into how this audience lives their lives — then tailor their ads, content, and product suggestions to their findings.

But what kind of data is gathered? Well, the wearables track heart rate, sleep, movement, body composition, nutrition, and even tone analysis. Yes, the Halo View will listen to its wearers and analyze their tone of voice so that they can be “more aware of how they sound to others.”

This is a lot of potential data for Amazon to utilize to better understand and connect with Gen Z going forward.

But it’s not just about tapping into Gen Z insights — Marketing Dive explains that by teaming up with “one of the largest fitness franchises in America, Amazon can market its wearable to an engaged audience and maintain its foothold in the wellness industry”. And it’s a fairly good idea — brand partnerships can be incredibly effective if done well.

It’s yet to be seen how successful the Halo View will be, especially when considering the fact that there are many other more established names in the fitness tracker industry — think FitBit, Oura, or the Apple Watch. Amazon’s main hurdle when breaking into the wellness industry will be earning consumer trust and proving the quality of its products.

This partnership with Planet Fitness is a well-timed, solid start, as it could “help the franchise maintain its membership momentum with the potential for increased traffic in the lead up to the post-holiday season, a period that typically sees increased traffic as many commit to New Years resolutions.” We’ll be checking back in come 2023 to see how this partnership has fared — and if it’s brought Amazon the value it’s hoping for.

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