EOS Fitness Bets on Will Power to Redefine Gym Culture in 2025
EOS Fitness launched "EōS has a Sidekick" in the United States in January 2025, introducing Will Power — a small, blue, clay-like animated character — as the brand's first clearly documented recurring mascot, created with agency Riester to challenge the perfection-driven conventions of fitness advertising with a no-excuses, undaunted message of inclusive effort.
Will Power is a new EōS member in every sense. The character, as documented by EōS Fitness, wears a white workout headband and carries a gray EōS duffel bag, showing up to try every class, every machine, and every workout the gym offers — and not always succeeding. That deliberate imperfection is the point. Rather than showcasing chiselled bodies and effortless performance, the campaign positions showing up itself as a victory worth celebrating. The tagline, "Where There's a Will," distills the brand's philosophy into a single, memorable line built around the character's name and the concept of willpower as a universal human experience.
In the United States, the campaign rolled out nationally across an unusually broad media mix, according to EōS Fitness: billboards, digital media, radio, television, social media, in-gym installations, gym merchandise, and branded swag. That omnichannel reach reflects a campaign designed not merely to advertise EōS Fitness but to embed Will Power as a cultural touchstone within the brand's communities across Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas, and Utah — the states where EōS Fitness operates its 252-plus locations, per EōS Fitness. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100, reflecting solid creative ambition and award-validated execution within a competitive fitness category.
EōS Fitness developed the "EōS has a Sidekick" campaign after a year-long research process involving focus groups and member surveys, according to EōS Fitness. That depth of groundwork signals a strategic repositioning rather than a one-off creative exercise. Shilpi Sullivan, the executive credited with leading the campaign's development, described it on LinkedIn in January 2025 as a "brand (r)evolution" as EōS Fitness enters its second decade — a statement that frames Will Power not as a seasonal promotion but as the foundation of a renewed brand identity.
The strategic insight driving the campaign is a direct rejection of the dominant visual language of fitness advertising. As reported by MediaPost in January 2025, Will Power was intentionally designed to be small and round, representing gym members in all shapes and sizes rather than projecting an aspirational physical ideal. This positions EōS Fitness in deliberate contrast to competitors whose marketing leans on performance imagery. Planet Fitness, the largest low-cost gym chain in the United States by location count, has long used humour and anti-intimidation messaging, while Life Time targets the premium wellness segment with aspirational lifestyle content. EōS Fitness carves a distinct space between those poles: accessible in price point, emotionally resonant in tone, and anchored in the reality of imperfect effort rather than the promise of perfect results.
In the United States, the fitness industry context makes this positioning timely. The global health-and-fitness-club market is a growing market with strong projected compound annual growth rates through the latter half of the decade, making differentiation on values and character — rather than price alone — an increasingly viable long-term strategy for mid-market operators like EōS Fitness competing for member retention and acquisition across their Sun Belt footprint.
Will Power is a blue, clay-like animated character whose deliberately soft, rounded design communicates approachability over aspiration. Production credits for the character's visual development sit with Taylor James Ltd, a production company that Shilpi Sullivan publicly credited for "partnership and ingenuity" in a LinkedIn statement dated January 3, 2025. Riester served as the lead creative agency, with Sullivan also crediting Anthony Mitchell as her "partner in creativity" and Rich Drengberg for the trust placed in the campaign's direction, per Sullivan's own account cited on EōS Fitness platforms.
The decision to render Will Power in a clay-adjacent aesthetic carries deliberate creative weight. As reported by MediaPost in January 2025, the character's physical qualities — small, round, unmistakably non-idealized — are not incidental but central to the campaign's argument: that fitness is different for everyone, and that every genuine effort deserves recognition regardless of outcome. Will fails. Will tries again. Will remains undaunted. That narrative loop, executed through animation rather than live action, allows the campaign to dramatise setbacks, surprises, and imperfect workouts with a lightness that live fitness advertising rarely achieves without veering into parody.
The campaign's single film asset anchors a multimedia ecosystem that extends from television and digital video to physical in-gym installations and branded merchandise across EōS Fitness locations in the United States. According to riester.com, the work represented a new creative direction rather than a new agency relationship — Riester and EōS Fitness brought shared institutional knowledge to a brief that demanded both strategic courage and precise tonal control. The result is a campaign whose craft is inseparable from its strategy: the character design, animation style, and distribution choices all serve the same no-excuses, undaunted brand argument.
"EōS has a Sidekick" earned four ADDY Awards, according to EōS Fitness: two Gold ADDYs in the Animation/Special Effects/Motion Graphics/CGI and Online Commercial Campaign categories, and two Silver ADDYs including one in the Art Direction category. Award recognition at this level, from a competition administered by the American Advertising Federation, provides externally verifiable validation of the campaign's creative execution and positions EōS Fitness as a serious creative competitor within the United States fitness advertising landscape.
No additional verified performance metrics — including membership acquisition numbers, digital engagement rates, or media reach figures — are publicly available for the "EōS has a Sidekick" campaign beyond what EōS Fitness and Riester have directly disclosed. What the structural evidence does support is a campaign built for sustained brand impact rather than short-term conversion. The omnichannel deployment across billboards, television, radio, social, digital, and in-gym touchpoints across EōS Fitness's 252-plus US locations creates repeated exposure for Will Power as a brand asset. The character's design, as documented by adsoftheworld.com, is distinctive enough to function across media formats without losing legibility — a meaningful creative achievement for an animated mascot introduced to a national audience simultaneously across multiple channels. The ADDY recognition in both craft and campaign categories affirms that the work succeeded on both the execution and the strategic communication dimensions that judges evaluate.
EOS Fitness launched "EōS has a Sidekick" in January 2025 to introduce Will Power, a blue animated mascot representing imperfect, undaunted gym effort. Created with Riester, the campaign replaced idealized fitness imagery with a character who tries, stumbles, and keeps going — making every workout a win, according to EōS Fitness.
Riester created "EōS has a Sidekick" for EOS Fitness, launching in the United States on January 1, 2025. Production company Taylor James Ltd contributed to the character's visual development. Shilpi Sullivan led the campaign internally, crediting Anthony Mitchell as her creative partner, per statements published on EōS Fitness platforms.
The campaign won four ADDY Awards, according to EōS Fitness: two Gold ADDYs in Animation/Special Effects/Motion Graphics/CGI and Online Commercial Campaign categories, and two Silver ADDYs including Art Direction. The American Advertising Federation administers the ADDY Awards, making these externally verifiable industry recognitions for the 2025 US campaign.
Will Power is deliberately small and round, designed to represent gym members in all shapes and sizes, as reported by MediaPost in January 2025. Unlike competitors whose advertising centers on physical ideals, EOS Fitness uses Will to normalize imperfect workouts and frame showing up as an achievement — a no-excuses, undaunted creative philosophy.
EOS Fitness deployed the campaign nationally across billboards, television, radio, digital media, social media, in-gym installations, and branded merchandise, according to EōS Fitness. The rollout covered the brand's 252-plus locations across Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas, and Utah, making it a fully integrated national campaign for the 2025 launch.
The EOS Fitness "EōS has a Sidekick" campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects solid creative ambition, award-validated craft through four ADDY wins, and a strategically coherent no-excuses brand argument, balanced against limited publicly available performance data for the United States 2025 campaign.
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