ITV has agreed to take a position as much as £3 million in Joe Wicks’s well being and health platform The Physique Coach, deepening the broadcaster’s push into digital client manufacturers.
The deal has been struck via ITV’s AdVentures Make investments fund and can see The Physique Coach promote throughout ITV’s linear channels and its streaming platform ITVX, giving the app entry to one of many UK’s largest broadcast audiences.
Wicks launched The Physique Coach app in late 2020, constructing on the big profile he gained throughout the Covid lockdowns when his each day house exercises turned a fixture for thousands and thousands of households. The app supplies personalised coaching plans, wholesome recipes and entry to on-line communities designed to maintain customers motivated.
A brand new tv promoting marketing campaign will launch on 1 January, with commercials airing throughout programmes fronted by Wicks on ITV1 and ITVX.
Wicks stated the partnership marked a big milestone within the model’s development.
“I by no means imagined after I began my bootcamps within the park over 12 years in the past that The Physique Coach would develop right into a model reaching thousands and thousands of individuals,” he stated.
“Working with ITV permits us to deliver a optimistic, supportive message about well being and wellbeing into properties throughout the UK at a time when individuals actually need it.”
The funding comes at a pivotal second for ITV and different public service broadcasters, as conventional tv faces mounting stress from world streaming giants resembling Netflix and Amazon, in addition to digital promoting platforms owned by Meta and Google.
The backdrop has been additional difficult by current studies that Comcast, proprietor of Sky, has held talks about buying ITV’s broadcasting arm — elevating wider questions on the way forward for UK public service media and home information provision.
AdVentures Make investments, launched in 2021, is ITV’s reply to those structural shifts. The fund takes minority fairness stakes in early-stage and consumer-facing companies, alongside enterprise capital buyers, in return for long-term promoting commitments on ITV’s platforms.
The Physique Coach now joins a rising portfolio of AdVentures-backed companies, together with the situation app what3words, on-line furnishings comparability web site ufurnish.com, and on-line property company Strike, which later traded as Purplebricks.
For ITV, the technique is designed to generate new income streams past conventional promoting, whereas serving to client manufacturers scale rapidly via tv — nonetheless one of the vital highly effective brand-building instruments within the UK market.
As for Wicks, the partnership cements his transition from lockdown health phenomenon to a completely fledged digital well being entrepreneur, with considered one of Britain’s greatest broadcasters now backing the following section of The Physique Coach’s development.
