Stepping out of the medicine cabinet and into the gym bag 

DeepHeat were stuck in a loop of silver-haired gardeners and creaky clichés. 

The topical pain relief category had been static for 4 years. 

It has an ageing core market who was either facing more chronic pain issues such as Arthritis, for which products like Deep Heat are not suitable. Or they were simply dying. 

The category had a big (self-created) image problem. The ‘Grey’ equivalent of a 90’s tampon advert, it was typically elderly people overcoming their back pain and getting back to their gardening. Own label, like with most categories, are absorbing more price-conscious consumers who did not want to pay a premium. 

We needed to give the category a serious upgrade, repositioning Deep Heat as a modern essential for active bodies, not just ageing ones.  

Our mission? To reignite the brand, reframe the conversation, and unlock a whole new generation of users. 

We tapped into an evangelical audience - the HIIT-obsessed CrossFit community. These weren’t just casual gym-goers; they were relentless, injury-prone, and proudly so. Always pushing harder and always talking about it. Their genuine need for pain relief made them ideal advocates, and their influence extended well beyond the gym floor into running clubs, 5-a-side pitches, and WhatsApp groups where recommendations carry real weight.   

The Big Idea – The Official Preparation and Recovery sidekick for Hyrox athletes 

Social media platforms are the dominant platforms for fitness advice, and they overflow with weightlifting programs and nutrition tips, yet there’s a noticeable content gap when it comes to preparation and recovery, especially for high-intensity training like CrossFit – nobody was talking about the importance of or about guidance on preparation and recovery! We set out to change that. Our goal was to become the go-to resource for CrossFitters looking to optimize performance through smarter prep and recovery. To make it happen, we teamed up with a diverse mix of CrossFit experts and amateurs, challenging them to train for the sport’s biggest competitive event: Hyrox. 

Making it happen: Product in action 

Stage 1: Building Credibility Through Community.  To establish credibility with the highly discerning CrossFit audience, Deep Heat became an official sponsor of the 2024 Hyrox tournament, securing exclusive access to key events in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. The sponsorship served a dual purpose: first, to authentically embed the brand within the CrossFit space, and second, to generate rich, relevant content by engaging directly with athletes, influencers, and the wider community. 

At each event, Deep Heat created a fully branded Preparation Zone, where participants could take part in guided warm-ups and mobility exercises designed to prime their bodies for peak performance. Post-race, athletes were welcomed into the Recovery Zone, a dedicated space offering physiotherapy, massage treatments, and expert-led recovery support. These immersive, hands-on experiences positioned Deep Heat as more than a sponsor, as a true partner in performance and recovery. 

Stage 2:  Fuelling and filling the content gap.  We did not have any advertising assets for this campaign. We wanted real people showing how they use the Deep Heat range (including Freeze and Relief product variants) in their own way, as part of their training regime.  And that is exactly what we did.  Working in partnership with Ladbible, we recruited athletes Jake Williams and Sarah Holden as well as a host of lifestyle influencers such as Love Island’s Casey O’ Gorman and followed their journey as they trained and competed in Hyrox. 

Stage 3: Supercharging creator content through digital. We scaled our content using the channel most used by our audience for fitness and training advice; social media.  We combined interest and follower-based targeting with geo-location around gyms, CrossFit boxes and F45 & HIIT studios nationwide to scale all the content we had produced with our creators.