the strategy issue, for PR message
Should I target Valhalla CrossFit at people who are predisposed to embrace the challenge of CrossFit's methodology, who will not be turned off by the predominant vibes of "intense" "hardcore" "extreme"?

Because that's a small, possibly very small, subset of my potential target audience.

Under this tradeoff -- the tradeoff between "fitness for everyone" vs. "fitness for elites" -- lies a complicated issue. Most of you imagine a qualitative gap between the kind of people who get excited by the idea of "training like a Spartan" and... well, everyone else.

CrossFit has been oriented -- by default, and by accident more than by design -- to the fitness elites. But it won't always be so, and it needn't be so.

CrossFit is the most effective means at reducing the gap between natural athletes and the kinesthetically challenged. If anything, it's more valuable to everyone else than it is to the fitness elites. But there's a public relations challenge. People seem to believe in this qualitative gap between crossfit-types and themselves, and CrossFit has largely kept itself oriented to the "No Pain, No Gain" crowd.

That's why I've been so stuck on that Tagline / Slogan issue.

CrossFit programming changes this imagined qualitative gap between athletes and 'everyone else' into comparatively trivial, quantitative adjustments in load, intensity, time.

I think it's a pretty big ordeal of reorientation and marketing, to pitch CrossFit to everyone --- while stll attracting the people who will be unequivocally addicted to it from day one.

If my strategy is to stay with the default orientation -- Forging Elite Fitness, No Whiners, No Pain No Gain, Extreme Demands and Extraordinary Results for Firebreathers, etc -- I don't have to solve the marketing strategy that fights uphill, trying to integrate such conflicting messages into --- to pick the present thorn --- a coherent Tagline.

That's where I'm at today. "Extreme Demands, Optimal Results --- Intelligent Fitness & Health Training" is not my final decision -- it was more a panicked, hasty kludge in the midst of website design.


I want to see CrossFit successfully transition to reaching everyone. This process will happen, inevitably. I'd like to be one of the people blazing that trail. I'll need to grow into that challenge, however. If we're not trying to be the solution for everyone while emphasizing our superiority as the stuff of monsters... the message is so much clearer.

With this decision I can solve the tagline issue! er... soon. Not today.