A tale of two gyms

One of the most integral aspects of branding is consistency. If you aim to be known for something you better live up to it in the real world beyond the flashy ads and the pr. This holiday I had two completely different brand experiences with the same brand, a brand I interact with daily. I'm a member of Gold's Gym in Tallahassee. Gold's professes to understand the importance of having a strong brand:

"Brand Awareness is one of any company's most important assets and certainly the strong brand awareness enjoyed by the Gold's Gym brand is a key reason to consider a franchise. Franchisees benefit from over 40 years of Gold's Gym brand recognition as the fitness industry creator and leader - it's an achievement that provides our franchise owners an instant advantage over other fitness clubs.

Gold's Gym has established worldwide recognition through millions of dollars of advertising placement, consistent P.R. exposure and strategic marketing alliances and promotions. Members trust our tradition of excellence."

My gym has new and slightly used equipment, it is well lit and decently clean. The staff knows me personally and do a good job of making me feel valued. In Tallahassee a lot of their advertising has focused on positioning themselves as "the cleanest gym in Tallahassee."They do a good job of living up to it as the facility provides many spray bottles with cleaner and a towel for wiping down equipment and employ a high school student to constantly wipe down machines ensuring I don't have to share sweat with others. My local franchise gave me a set of standards I expected of the other franchises I visited during my holiday vacation.

My first experience during the holidays was with a Gold's Gym in Mt. Dora, FL, a suburb of Orlando. An extremely positive experience, the gym was new so all the equipment was in outstanding condition, it was extremely bright and the gym was also equipped with a lot of sharp looking flat screen televisions which really added to the atmosphere. The biggest and most important factor in making this a positive experience was the cleanliness. Albeit it was a new gym but each machine, each piece of equipment had a spray bottle with cleaner and a towel. The gym was immaculate. By all accounts it was consistent with my preexisting brand experiences and lived up to if not exceeded my brand expectations.

Farther south as my vacation and my opinion of the Gold's Gym brand moved in that direction, This experience took place at Gold's in Sunrise, FL, a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale. This experience was dreadful. The gym was dark, dank and stank. There wasn't a piece of equipment that had been updated since the 1980's. Half the televisions didn't work and it felt as if the AC was also not working. The flooring was a dirty yellow carpet. The worst part was there wasn't one spray bottle of cleaner in the entire facility. There were no little cleaning dudes scrubbing the equipment and it showed. I thought perhaps I was in an experiment meant to study staph infections. The place smelled like garbage and sweaty feet. I felt dirtier from being in the facility than from my actual workout.

Two such drastically different brand experiences are not conducive to maintaining an effective brand. Each gym had slightly different kinds of machines, they carried different brands of equipment which operated slightly different which wasn't a problem at all. The problem was in the vastly different quality and condition of each location.

Though these are franchises, each with separate owners most companies have policies and regulations in place to avoid such different experiences. Such is the point of franchising, not to simply hang the same name on the door. As an international franchise consistency seems like it would be higher on the priority list.