Crunch Fitness launched Feel More in December 2025, a campaign directed by Hype Williams and set to Montell Jordan's This Is How We Do It, targeting younger
ARCHIVECrunch Fitness Feel More Brings Hype Williams to the Gym Floor
Crunch Fitness launched Feel More on December 26, 2025, a national campaign directed by filmmaker Hype Williams and set to Montell Jordan's 1995 hit This Is How We Do It, positioning the gym chain as a joyful, community-driven fitness experience for younger Americans seeking relief from everyday stress.
Feel More is the direct evolution of Crunch's Feel Good, Not Bad platform, which debuted nationally on December 26, 2023, also through agency of record Familiar Creatures. Where the earlier campaign established an emotional permission structure around working out without pressure, Feel More sharpens that idea into something more immersive and culturally specific. The campaign is built around the concept of two gym-goers who feel as though they are living inside a music video, a creative premise that allowed Williams to apply the cinematic visual language he developed across decades of directing for artists including Beyoncé, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, and Missy Elliott. According to PRNewswire, the campaign was designed to emphasise that a Crunch workout is not simply physical exercise but a transformative experience that leaves members feeling more uplifted, more empowered, and more connected to the brand's No Judgments community.
In the United States, Crunch is positioned as a high-value, low-price gym operating more than 600 locations worldwide, according to Crunch's own published figures, with 91 new clubs opened during 2025 alone, as reported by Crunch. The Feel More rollout is correspondingly wide, spanning a 90-second hero spot, 30-second advertisements, and social cutdowns, as reported by MediaPost. Distribution covers premium connected television, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch — the latter representing Crunch's first reported use of the platform — alongside national broadcast, radio, billboards, merchandise, and in-gym materials, according to PRNewswire. Clapboard's editorial team rates Feel More 63 out of 100 on the Clapboard Score, reflecting a campaign with genuine creative ambition that lands unevenly across its executional range.
ARCHIVECrunch Fitness identified relief, community, and moments of joy as the three things its target consumer craves most in 2025. That consumer insight, drawn from the brand's own Young, Strong and Social audience segmentation and cited in the campaign launch materials published on PRNewswire, frames the entire strategic rationale for Feel More. Rather than compete on equipment, pricing, or results-based messaging, Crunch is staking its positioning on emotional resonance and cultural authenticity.
The choice of Montell Jordan's This Is How We Do It as the campaign's sonic spine is strategic rather than sentimental. Chad Waetzig, Chief Marketing Officer at Crunch Fitness, stated that younger members are turning toward the comfort and nostalgia of the 1990s and early 2000s in response to an increasingly stressful world. Crunch, which describes itself as the original 1990s gym and a brand known for being fun, irreverent, and offbeat for more than 35 years, is positioned to claim that nostalgia with more credibility than most gym competitors. In the United States, that competitive landscape is significant. Planet Fitness, Crunch's most direct rival in the high-value, low-price segment, simultaneously pursued resolution season with its own campaign, as reported by MediaPost in December 2025, making the timing of Feel More's December 26 launch a deliberate pre-resolution bid for cultural share of voice. Equinox, operating at the premium end of the market, competes on aspiration and exclusivity, a positioning that leaves the joyful, communal middle ground that Crunch is actively claiming with Feel More relatively open.
The broader fitness market in the United States sits within a global health and fitness club industry valued at a growing market, with the global figure reaching what Grand View Research estimates at a trajectory of 9.3 percent compound annual growth through 2032. In this environment, emotional differentiation is increasingly a primary growth lever, and Feel More reflects Crunch's conviction that belonging and joy are more powerful acquisition tools than performance metrics alone.
Hype Williams directed the Feel More campaign. His selection is the single most consequential creative decision in the entire production, because it transforms what could have been a conventional fitness advertisement into a piece of visual culture with its own internal logic.
Williams built his reputation directing music videos for some of the most influential artists in popular music, including Beyoncé, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, and Missy Elliott, according to PRNewswire. His signature style — saturated colour, wide-angle distortion, choreographic camera movement, and a strong sense of cinematic spectacle — translates directly into the Feel More creative premise. Justin Bajan, Co-founder of Familiar Creatures, described the concept as emerging around two gym-goers who feel like they are in a music video, a frame that gives Williams explicit creative licence to deploy exactly the visual grammar that made his music video work iconic. Bajan further noted, as cited by Familiar Creatures, that the collaboration with Williams was designed to lean into the nostalgia of the ultimate 1990s anthem while portraying the future of gym offerings, a deliberate tension between heritage and modernity that runs through every frame of the hero spot.
Familiar Creatures, Crunch's agency of record for four years at the time of launch according to PRNewswire, conceived the campaign to leverage the full range of Crunch's fitness and wellness offerings while capturing the overall vibe of the brand, in Bajan's own words. The production delivers across a 90-second hero spot built for premium connected television and a suite of shorter formats optimised for YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. The use of This Is How We Do It is not merely nostalgic licensing; the track's energy and cultural familiarity does structural work in the ad, shortcutting emotional engagement and making the gym floor feel like a stage. Montell Jordan's 1995 recording, as documented in the campaign materials published on PRNewswire and reported by MediaPost, anchors the entire creative execution to a specific cultural moment that Crunch has a legitimate brand history to claim.
No independently verified performance data for the Feel More campaign, such as reach figures, view counts, or membership conversion rates, is publicly available at the time of this analysis. The campaign launched on December 26, 2025, and third-party measurement results covering resolution season attribution have not been publicly disclosed by Crunch Fitness or Familiar Creatures.
Structural analysis of the campaign's effectiveness points to several durable strengths. The media mix is notably broad for a gym brand operating in the high-value, low-price segment, spanning premium connected television, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, national broadcast, radio, out-of-home, and in-gym touchpoints, as reported by MediaPost. That breadth creates consistent exposure across the full funnel during the highest-intent fitness purchase window of the year. The decision to launch on December 26 positions Feel More ahead of resolution season rather than within it, a timing advantage that allows Crunch to shape emotional framing before competitors flood the same channels in early January.
The Twitch activation is structurally significant. As reported by Athletech News, this represents Crunch's first use of the platform, extending the campaign into a younger, digitally native audience that skews toward the Young, Strong and Social target the brand has explicitly named. The director's cultural credibility with that same demographic reinforces rather than contradicts the media strategy. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its core creative concept with genuine craft and cultural intelligence but whose overall impact across the full suite of shorter formats does not consistently match the ambition of the hero spot.
Feel More is Crunch Fitness's national advertising campaign launched on December 26, 2025. Directed by Hype Williams and set to Montell Jordan's 1995 song This Is How We Do It, it positions Crunch as a joyful, community-centred fitness experience for younger members across the United States, evolving the brand's earlier Feel Good, Not Bad platform.
Hype Williams directed Feel More. Williams is known for directing music videos for artists including Beyoncé, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, and Missy Elliott. His cinematic music-video style shapes the campaign's central premise, in which two gym-goers experience their workout as though they are living inside a music video, according to PRNewswire.
Familiar Creatures created Feel More. The Richmond-based agency has served as Crunch Fitness's agency of record for four years, according to PRNewswire. Co-founder Justin Bajan described the concept as designed to capture the vibe of the brand while leveraging Crunch's full range of fitness offerings and collaborating with Hype Williams on the nostalgic creative direction.
The campaign uses Montell Jordan's 1995 hit This Is How We Do It. According to PRNewswire and MediaPost, the track was chosen because its energy and cultural familiarity authentically reflect Crunch's identity as the original 1990s gym, connecting the brand's 35-year heritage to younger members seeking nostalgic, joyful experiences in the United States.
Feel More launched nationally in the United States on December 26, 2025. As reported by MediaPost, the campaign ran across premium connected television, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch, alongside national broadcast, radio, billboards, and in-gym materials. Twitch was reported by Athletech News as a first for Crunch Fitness as a media channel.
Feel More directly evolves the Feel Good, Not Bad platform, which Crunch Fitness launched on December 26, 2023, also through Familiar Creatures, according to Adweek and MediaPost. Where that campaign established a low-pressure emotional tone, Feel More intensifies the idea into a fully cinematic, nostalgia-driven experience centred on community and joy for a younger American audience.
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