How thoughtbot helped create a brand identity and digitize a fitness service company with The Fit Rebel

Nastassia Syz, Founder and CEO of The Fit Rebel, had spent many years training and educating clients on fitness and nutrition. Over the years, they developed a methodology that incorporates mind and body work to meet health goals. The digital transformation of the fitness industry, magnified by the pandemic, meant that it was time for The Fit Rebel to build an online brand and presence.  

Together, The Fit Rebel and thoughtbot set out to define their brand identity, develop a content and marketing strategy, and launch a website that would help expand and grow their business.

Brand Sprint Process

We conducted a series of exercises based on Google Ventures Brand Sprint that helped us to establish a brand system for The Fit Rebel including a logo, colors, fonts, images, and overall tone and visual expression of their values and mission. Understanding The Fit Rebel’s long term goals was essential to defining the brand and our go-to-market strategy for their new web presence. The core elements that helped us to define the brand identity were:

• Company Values and Mission (This is the what, how, and why of The Fit Rebel)
• Target Audience (the target audiences for their brand)
• Brand Attributes (Define the attitude, personality, and style of the brand)
• Competitive Landscape (What are other companies doing in this space? What can The Fit Rebel do differently?)

Once we established the foundation of the brand, we started to explore the visual expression of that. The thoughtbot design team came up with 3 logo options for The Fit Rebel to choose from, then incorporated  the visual identity to build and document a brand system that can be used for future design collateral and iterations of the website.

In addition to marketing their services and content online, The Fit Rebel needed a way for their customers to purchase and interact with that content. We knew going into this that it made the most sense to utilize a low-code solution like Squarespace so that we could move quickly and reduce overhead for website and content maintenance. Since there were some capabilities lacking in the standard SquareSpace business services and ecommerce solutions, we also used the SquareSpace Stripe integration as well as an integration with Memberspace. This combination gave Fit Rebel enough flexibility to meet near and long-term business goals without adding a ton of overhead and maintenance. 

The next step was incorporating Fit Rebel’s new brand identity, high-quality photos, and various types of media content to build and launch an online experience for customers. With the business online, Fit Rebel customers and fitness enthusiasts were able to view and schedule classes, purchase the Fit Rebel Plan (eBook), and get access to member perks like nutritional recipes and other content.

The Fit Rebel’s CEO Nastassia came to thoughtbot with years of experience and content ideas ready to share with the world. As the Fitness industry has evolved, an active online presence is table stakes. We knew that there was an opportunity to not only share that content in the new website and ebook, but to grow her social media audience and create more channels for engaging with The Fit Rebel Method. As such, Nastassia prioritized creating more and more valuable content to share, including videos, recipes, program guidance, and live sessions.

The result of our partnership was the visual expression of Nasstassia’s story and vision for The Fit Rebel, as well as the tools in place to support and grow as a business. 

The Fit Rebel went from being a methodology and idea that Nastassia shared with her community to a brand and digital presence that she could share with the world. Highlighting the new logo in business cards, swag, and studio gear helped tie the brand together with the new website and ebook design, while growing her social media followers and new client access to programming.