EE dabbles with Pilates for gamers

The coronation of EE as the BT group consumer brand has apparently unlocked a new raft of whacky marketing initiatives.

From the people who brought you robot shaving, air traffic control from the comfort of your own home and 5G clubbing, we now have workouts for gamers. The understandable premise is that people who play a lot of computer games are not usually the core constituency of the local gym and possibly don’t move about much at all. So EE has taken it upon itself to encourage them to do at least the bare minimum, if only to keep themselves sharp for the next game-athon.

There doesn’t seem to be a press release for this, Twitter being the preferred medium for interacting directly with the market, but you can access the full workout in the YouTube video below. As you can see, it even has a snappy acronym – GIFT – which stands for Gaming Intensity Fitness Training. In practice it looks more like basic Pilates, which is still a lot better than nothing.

Reading between the lines, this seems this is a manifestation of the belated rationalisation of the two main BT group brands. It was obvious from the moment it was acquired by BT that EE is the stronger brand and it only took the company seven years to make it official. Gaming is much more associated with broadband than mobile, so presumably this small initiative is part of the great brand repositioning.

Compared to some of the previous products of EE’s uninhibited marketing department, this one at least seems to have some real-world utility. It’s not just gamers that sit around staring at a screen all day, so perhaps EE and chums could develop a special programme for sedentary hacks. You never know, that might even make us a bit more accommodating towards its next ad campaign.

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