Unreal Media was Fitness Cartel’s video production partner since their first club opened at Aspley and Maroochydore and Tweed Heads were re-branded from World Gym to Fitness Cartel. Over the three years and eleven locations across Queensland and New South Wales, we produced club walkthroughs, launch hype videos, staff recruitment content, facility tours, apparel brand content, and a personal brand series for founder Nathan James.
That personal brand work directly contributed to an investor buying into a Fitness Cartel franchise location. We also briefly produced showcase content for their wellness brand Merse, a completely different tone and brief to the gym work, handled under the same production partnership.
How we started working together
Jakob’s background before Unreal Media was in paid social and content strategy, running ads, managing content at scale, watching in real time what performed and what didn’t. That history is relevant here because Fitness Cartel wasn’t just looking for someone to film their gyms. They needed content that actually worked in market.
I actually met Nathan after he saw one of the videos I did with one of his PT’s at his previous brand. From there we built a great mentor/mentee relationship and he truly was a driving force in where I am at today. It was natural that as he decided to start Fitness Cartel, I was given the opportunity to cover all their video content.
They understood early that the visual identity of the brand was part of building the brand. The brief from day one was production with a purpose, not just a good-looking showreel. These videos had not choice but to perform well as the majority of time they were utilised on Facebook Ads. Three years and eleven clubs later, that brief hadn’t changed.
About Fitness Cartel Australia
Fitness Cartel is a Queensland-born gym chain founded by Nathan James and TJ Groot. Starting from a single club in Aspley, the brand expanded to eleven locations across South East Queensland and into New South Wales, Aspley, Virginia, Morayfield, Nundah, Maroochydore, Holmview, Beenleigh, Oxley, Kippa-Ring, and Tweed Heads. Alongside the gym chain, Nathan built the Success Cartel business education platform and launched Merse, a separate wellness brand. Video was central to all three.
The challenge
Scaling a gym brand from one club to eleven across two states means a new marketing challenge every few months. Each club opening needs pre-launch content that drives memberships before the doors open. Existing members need to feel the energy of a brand that’s growing. Staff need to be recruited into a culture they can see before they apply. And a founder building a personal brand alongside the business needs content that positions him as a credible voice, not just someone promoting his own gyms.
What we produced
11club locations
3years producing
3brands covered
Origin
Where the partnership started. Nathan James and TJ Groot were building from scratch and needed content that worked in market, not just looked good. Aspley, Maroochydore, and Tweed Heads all came online around the same period as the brand hit its first expansion phase.
Club walkthrough
Launch hype video
Facility tour
Virginia became the operational HQ for the Fitness Cartel brand. The apparel warehouse is based here too, which meant production work at this location covered both the gym and the apparel brand.
Fitness Cartel Apparel warehouse and brand HQ
Club walkthrough
Apparel brand content
Facility tour
First expansion phase
First Sunshine Coast location, opening around the same time as Aspley and Tweed Heads. The brand was moving beyond Brisbane faster than most expected.
Club walkthrough
Hype video
Facility tour
Inner-north Brisbane. Walkthrough and hype content for the pre-launch membership drive.
Club walkthrough
Hype video
North Brisbane expansion into the Moreton Bay region. Staff recruitment content came into the mix at this stage as the team scaled across multiple locations simultaneously.
Club walkthrough
Recruitment video
Launch content
South Brisbane push
First Logan-area location. Content production by this point was a well-oiled process across the partnership.
Club walkthrough
Testimonial content
Launch hype
Second Logan location. The flythrough video we produced for Holmview is one of the standout pieces from the entire partnership.
Flythrough video
Club walkthrough
Launch hype
South-west Brisbane. By this stage, apparel brand and Nathan’s personal brand content were running alongside the club productions.
Club walkthrough
Recruitment video
Testimonial content
Redcliffe and interstate
The Kippa-Ring location carries the most significant story from the entire partnership.
Anthony Chimirri found Nathan through the personal brand content we produced. He took the Success Cartel course. He bought into and now operates this franchise location.
Club walkthrough
Launch content
First interstate location, opening around the same period as Aspley and Maroochydore. The brand crossed the Queensland border and the production partnership crossed with it.
Club walkthrough
Hype video
Facility tour
Beyond the clubs
Alongside the clubs we produced educational business content for Nathan’s personal brand, showcase videos for Merse his wellness brand, and product content for the Fitness Cartel apparel line. Three distinct visual identities, one production partner.
Personal brand content
Success Cartel course
Merse showcases
Apparel content
Club walkthroughs and facility tours across eleven locations
Every new Fitness Cartel club got a walkthrough video. The brief was consistent across all eleven: show the space, the equipment, and the atmosphere in a way that makes someone want to train there. These ran as organic social content and as paid ad creative for pre-launch membership campaigns. Coordinating across eleven openings over three years meant working around fit-out schedules, club manager availability, and the reality that a new gym is rarely fully finished when you need to film it.
Grand Opening Videos
Club launches are the highest-stakes content moment in a gym brand’s calendar. You have a short window to generate enough attention to get enough pre-sales that your open from day 1 strong. Typically pre-sales is the only time during the time of owning that gym that you’ll have the cheapest cost per lead too, so getting the videos done throughout the build help keep people engaged and the hype alive.
Staff recruitment video
As Fitness Cartel scaled, they needed to recruit personal trainers and gym staff across multiple locations simultaneously. Rather than job board listings, they used video to show prospective staff what the culture looked like, the environment, the team, the energy of the brand. Good recruitment content attracts people who are already bought in before the interview. That was the brief and that was the outcome.
Nathan James personal brand content
Alongside the club work, we produced educational business content for Nathan’s personal brand. The brief was to build an audience around his story and expertise in fitness and business, and let that audience feed back into Fitness Cartel’s growth. The content positioned him as a credible voice in the Australian fitness business space, and it worked in ways that went beyond follower counts.
Fitness Cartel Apparel brand content
We produced video content for Fitness Cartel’s apparel brand alongside the gym work. The brief shifted from facility and atmosphere to product, showcasing the clothing in a way that matched the energy of the gym brand without feeling like a generic fashion shoot. A different production discipline to gym content and it required a genuinely different visual approach.
Merse wellness brand showcase video
Nathan and the team launched Merse as a separate wellness brand. The showcase videos needed to establish a distinct identity, calmer and more considered than the high-energy gym content, while still sitting within the broader brand family Nathan was building. Producing content for three brands with different tones, audiences, and commercial purposes for the same founder requires genuine understanding of what each brand is actually trying to say and to whom.
Ignitit Promo
The result
The most direct outcome from three years of work didn’t show up in a reach metric.
Anthony Chimirri found Nathan James through the personal brand content we helped produce. He took Nathan’s Success Cartel business course. Off the back of that relationship, he invested in and became an owner of the Kippa-Ring Fitness Cartel franchise location. The reason I am comfortable telling that story is because Anthony has become a good friend of mine and even a client of Unreal Media, where we also did video content for his company Kode Finance.
Across eleven club openings, three brands, and three years of production, the content library we built for Fitness Cartel became core to how the brand launched new locations, recruited staff, and established Nathan’s profile in the Australian fitness business space.
“Jakob has done quite a few jobs for me in my fitness clubs, plus with our staff, as well as the apparel company I’m associated with. He has always been very diligent with his work and organised, structured and presented a polished video shoot.” – Nathan James, Founder, Fitness Cartel Australia
Why gym and fitness brands benefit from professional video
A gym sells a feeling before it sells a membership. The decision to join, or to invest, or to work somewhere, is made emotionally first and justified logically second. Video is the format that creates that emotional response faster than anything else. For example, with Fitness Cartel we were showcasing their Techno Gym equipment, 5-start Hotel style bathrooms and overall an incredibly looked after facility.
For gyms, facility tours show potential members what they’re signing up for before they visit. Launch hype content generates pre-opening momentum that keeps the sales team busy doing pre-sales”. Recruitment videos attract staff who are aligned with the culture before the interview. Founder-led personal brand content builds the kind of trust and authority that turns an audience member into a course customer, a course customer into an investor, and an investor into a franchise partner.
Fitness Cartel used all of these across eleven locations over three years. If you’re running a gym, a fitness brand, or a multi-location health and wellness business in Brisbane or across Australia, talk to our Brisbane video production team about producing video content.
FAQ: Video production for gyms and fitness brands
What types of video work best for gym and fitness brands?
Facility walkthroughs and launch hype content are the highest-impact formats for driving memberships. Staff recruitment videos attract culture-fit candidates without relying on job boards. Founder and personal brand content builds long-term authority that compounds over time, Fitness Cartel’s personal brand content directly contributed to a franchise investor relationship. The right mix depends on where the business is in its growth.
How do you film in a gym environment around members and training schedules?
Timing and coordination matter more than anything. We work around opening hours, training schedules, and fit-out timelines, particularly for new club launches where we need to capture the space before it gets busy. Across eleven Fitness Cartel productions over three years, we developed a production process that moves efficiently in these environments without disrupting the business.
Can video production help a gym attract franchise investors or partners?
It can, and it did. The personal brand content we produced for Fitness Cartel founder Nathan James built an audience that included Anthony Chimirri, who took Nathan’s Success Cartel business course and went on to invest in and operate the Kippa-Ring franchise location. That outcome came directly from a video content strategy built around a genuine personal brand goal.
How much does video production for a gym or fitness brand cost in Brisbane
A single club walkthrough or launch hype video typically sits between $2,500 and $6,000 depending on the size of the facility and complexity of the edit/s. Ongoing content packages for multi-location brands are scoped individually based on volume and frequency. The best starting point is a quick call to understand what you need. Get in touch here.
Do you work with fitness brands outside Brisbane
Yes. We work with fitness and health brands across Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne. Travel is factored into the production scope upfront.
