The Sweaty Betty Playbook: How Smart Brands Talk To Women
decoding Sweaty Betty's success + worksheet to transform your marketing approach in 20 mins
Want to empower, inspire women, and present women with irresistible offers they actually want? Without offending, annoying, alienating or condescending? Look no further than Sweaty Betty for a masterclass in marketing to women.
While far too many brands trip over stereotypes and clichés, Sweaty Betty consistently delivers messaging that respects my intelligence and has me genuinely engaged.
Their email marketing, while I don’t click add to bag, summons me in store like a favourite song on repeat. (I love walking home with something that fits like a glove. In fact I often walk home wearing it.)
Their approach isn't magical. It's thoughtful. Meaning: strategic & methodical. I’m about to break it down so your brand can be more strategic and less annoying, too. Let’s get started 🪄
The Superpower of Representation
One of Sweaty Betty’s superpowers is using models and imagery to do the talking.
When a brand gets representation right, they bypass the "Wow, they so don't get me!" receptors that block receptivity to messaging, and unlock the pathway to enable their audience to lean in and engage with curiosity. It’s powerful brand-building at play, and Sweaty Betty excels.
This isn't just ticking diversity boxes or playing the game of inclusion to make bank, it's about reflecting the complexity of reality in seconds. A picture is worth a thousand words metaphor wielded with panache.
Let’s take this image as an example:
I’m mixed-race, perhaps younger (you can’t tell age from looks alone), but here I see a woman who is fit, healthy, athletic, toned, muscular and strong, just like me. More so, she glows with ageless vitality, and the expression on her face says she knows it. She’s oozing power, and I want to ooze power too. I see myself in her, but it’s aspirational, too. It draws me in like a bee to honey. 🐝
— 👏🏼 It's a pure 'show, not tell' that breaks age stereotypes in the fitness category, annihilating the myth that fitness is just for the young.
— 👏🏼 It empowers without pressure, because it's simply an example of what’s achievable without implying that all women should aspire to the same look, feel, or lifestyle.
— 👏🏼 It somehow communicates that fitness is for all bodies, of all ages: Muscles, agility, and wellness don’t belong to one age group, body type, or social standard—they are for anyone, at any time of life.
— 👏🏼 It shows what's possible without impressing social standards. It's proof that brands can celebrate strong women without imposing rigid ideals of what a woman 'should' be or look like.
— 👏🏼 It shows what strength and resilience 'can' look like — here I see a woman who is strong and empowered because she wants to be. It makes me wonder: "What does that look like for me?"
So how can you bypass the cringe and annoyance receptors and elicit the “Finally, a brand who gets me!” response, too?
Introducing: The Representation Analysis Framework + Worksheet (and if you can help me think of a more catchy name, please do let me know!)
The Representation Analysis Framework
— 👉🏼 Get the free workbook here, (it takes 20-min MAX ⏳)
By auditing your visual content through these 5 lenses, you'll uncover blind spots that could be blocking connection pathways with the women you're trying to reach.
Just quickly: This is a launchpad for creating a unique representation analysis framework that works for your brand, audience, category & product.
It also not endorsed by Sweat Betty in any way, this is a product of my own brandlust (fascination with the identity, story & essence of brand).
1. Age Awareness
Look at your last 20 images featuring women. Plot them on a timeline from 18-90+. Where do they cluster and where are they patchy? (There’s a pretty cool matrix in the Google sheet.) Does it match your user persona/s? Is it evenly spread across your target audience? Does it match your DEI ambition & publicly stated claims?
When was the last time your brand featured someone with visible greying/ grey/ white/ platinum hair, deep wrinkles, or obviously 50+ in a position of power or desirability (not just as poster child for wise-elder-diversity-checkbox)? I’m talking Helen-Mirren-Andie-MacDowell-Pamela-Anderson-don’t-give-a-fuck-empowered.
Stretch challenge: If your grandma, mother, and tween niece looked at your marketing, would they each feel seen, and each find levels of relatability/ aspiration/ validation regardless of age? (In fact, why not ask them!)
2. Body Language
Beyond size & shape, scrutinise how bodies are positioned in your imagery. Are certain body types always seated/passive while others stand/ pose confidently? Who's in motion versus still in poses?
When you feature ‘diverse body types’, are they shot with the same lighting integrity, style budget, and complementary angles as your other models?
Stretch challenge: Name three idiosyncratic messages your current imagery sends about which bodies deserve to use your product or service. (Ask them!)
3. Cultural Connection
Beyond skin tone, how are you representing cultural differences in lifestyle, values, and beauty traditions?
When featuring women of colour (including mixed-race women like me), are they shown in scenarios that reflect genuine cultural contexts or merely as exotic ornaments in predominantly white settings? (I see olive tones like mine predominantly depicted as a tan which drives me up the frickin’ wall).
Stretch challenge: If someone from a marginalised* community saw these images, would they feel seen, or used as a diversity checkbox? (Ask them!)
*Side Note:
Even though women make up 52% of the global population with astronomical purchasing power, we're still maddeningly treated as a niche demographic in marketing, and compelled to navigate a media landscape simultaneously as both target audience as well as outsiders looking in at visual imagery designed for the male gaze. Let’s end this 💜
4. Ability Agnostic
Do women with visible or invisible disabilities show up only when you're waxing lyrical about the generic idea of accessibility (and as another check box), or are they woven throughout your content naturally?
How often do you show adaptive ways of using your products without making disability the focus of the narrative?
Stretch challenge: Is your representation of different abilities expanding possibilities? (Rather than reinforcing limitations & perpetuating common misconceptions?) (Ask them!)
5. Lifestyle Authenticity
Map your imagery against different life contexts: CEO, Entrepreneur, Creator, Professional, Business Owner, Home Owner, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Student, Caregiver, Sovereign Woman etc. Where are the gulfs in diverse lifestyle representation that reflect your audience’s everyday reality?
When showing women in the home, how often are they portrayed as having identities beyond domestic reality, like entrepreneur, creative, CEO/ leadership, business owner, professional, decision maker, basically Boss of the Universe?
Stretch challenge: Do your images show empowered women in various relationship dynamics (single, partnered, parenting, child-free by choice). And without judgment or hierarchy?
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
This is a launchpad for creating a representation analysis framework that works for your brand, audience, category & product, I scream emphatically.
— 👉🏼 Get the free workbook here
Relevant Representation + Product Excellence = 💪🏼
None of this means much without product excellence in the first place. Sweaty Betty’s range is functional, sweat-wicking, practical, shape-adaptive, modest, (deadlifting 83% of my body weight makes me feel sexy); each piece lasts at least 4 years even though I wear it and wash it to death. The product-market fit is obvious.
I hope this 5-lens framework will help steer your brand as far away from check-box diversity as possible, and catapult you towards genuine inclusivity. Not just because it’s good for the bottom line (because it absolutely is), but because shaping human experience in a positive way is a brand imperative.
Sweaty Betty up-levels representation in fitness. I find it not just refreshing, but surprisingly revolutionary, especially in severing the fitness industry's obsession with youth.
Your brand’s visuals tell stories even when your words don’t.
Make sure they're telling the right ones.
—💭 What brands make you feel seen, and why?
P.S. for non-marketers: Sweaty Betty isn’t a plus-size brand, although one of their sports bra styles goes to XXXL. Super Fit Hero is dedicated exclusively to plus-size active wear. Brands develop products for specific audience segments to give them focus & direction, a practical business imperative that helps achieve product excellence and product-market fit. It’s important to celebrate brands lightyears ahead in relevant representation, and Sweaty Betty is a trailblazer for the audience they serve.
Typos are my way of checking that you're paying attention—or proof that my brain moves faster than my fingers. (Jury's still out.)