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The camera zooms in on two well-formed cheeks clad in white shorts. These buns of steel belong to one Hudson Williams, star of the steamy hockey romance Heated Rivalry. As the camera pans up, a bead of sweat drips down his chin toward his clavicle. Sweaty abs are shown. The music swells. Hollywood’s mega-hunk of the moment is swaying his chiseled visage back and forth, semi-gyrating on… a Peloton treadmill. A $6,695 Tread Plus, to be exact.
Cue a funky dance sequence set to David Bowie’s “Fame,” where Williams starts dumbbell squatting with popular Peloton instructor Tunde Oyeneyin. The camera lingers as Williams planks, shadow boxes, pumps iron, runs on the treadmill, and oozes the effortless charm of that guy she told you not to worry about.
Aw yeah. Veteran Peloton observers know what this means. New celebrity ambassador commercial? A rebrand is underway, baby.
It might seem weird to read Peloton’s tea leaves in a horny commercial. But I’d argue that viral Peloton commercials tend to bookend specific eras in the company’s history. Four years ago, previous CEO Barry McCarthy tried to shift the company’s focus away from expensive hardware toward subscriptions. For that era, the company put out an ad starring the surprisingly buff Christopher Meloni extolling the virtues of the app while working out… in the buff.
Likewise, take that infamous holiday commercial. It was tone-deaf in 2019 to see a husband gift a wife an exercise bike, but the commercial itself said a lot about how Peloton viewed itself — a company for internet-savvy, young, affluent people who’d view a premium exercise bike as a status symbol in their perfect West Elm homes. What followed was Peloton’s pandemic-fueled fever dream, a wild, bumpy ride of skyrocketing demand, business gaffes, recalls, and dubious product placements culminating in Mr. Big dying on his Peloton in the premiere of And Just Like That…. Again, that was followed by a cheeky Peloton commercial starring Chris Noth, the actor who portrays Mr. Big. That 2021 campaign ended up backfiring, as Noth was subsequently canceled over sexual harassment claims. Weeks later, Peloton’s bombastic CEO John Foley stepped down.
Given that history, it’s worth noting that in the latest Williams commercial, a Peloton Bike is nowhere to be seen. Williams is instead doing multiple kinds of workouts, and crucially, he’s not in a well-furnished home. He’s in a spacious gym.
Beat for beat, this all corresponds to the business machinations of Peloton’s third CEO, Peter Stern, a former Ford executive and one of the cofounders behind Apple Fitness Plus. Stern’s arrival has come with a sweeping hardware refresh that increased fees and introduced AI — or Peloton IQ, as they call it — to the Peloton platform. (Plus two layoffs, although at this point, I’ve lost count of how many layoffs Peloton’s had.) In earnings calls, Stern has also stated he no longer views Peloton as a fitness company. It’s a wellness company now, and in his words, that means expanding into “strength, stress management, sleep, and nutrition.” A recent Bloomberg report posits that Peloton IQ may play a bigger role in the platform beyond strength training, utilizing wearable data to suggest personalized plans. It also notes that Stern plans to appeal to GLP-1 users “seeking additional fitness options,” to take Peloton beyond the home by partnering with gyms and lifestyle brands, and to prioritize treadmills — not bikes — going forward.
Coincidence? I think not.
The new Peloton IQ features are okay, but AI was never a thing Peloton truly needed.
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