Oxygen Gyms Hillcrest was not just another gym opening.
It was the Australian launch of a premium Middle Eastern fitness brand entering a local market filled with low-cost 24/7 gyms, budget memberships and established fitness chains.
The challenge was clear.
Oxygen needed people to believe in the facility before it was finished, understand why it was different, and feel confident enough to join before they had ever trained there.
Unreal Media was involved from the beginning, handling the video production, photography and video marketing strategy behind the launch.
The result was a campaign that helped Oxygen Gyms Hillcrest hit its 1,500 pre-launch member target, grow past 2,000 members, generate hundreds of thousands of paid video views, reach millions organically, and establish itself as one of South East Queensland’s most talked-about fitness destinations.
The Brand
Oxygen Gyms is a serious fitness brand in the Middle East.
Their Kuwait flagship is the kind of facility that makes most commercial gyms look small by comparison. Their Riyadh location reportedly cost $60 million USD to build. They are not a high-volume, low-cost gym chain. Their model is built around one or two major locations per city, each developed to a standard that sits in a different category from the average gym.
Hillcrest was the first Australian location.
The facility followed the same premium blueprint. Two levels. A 15-metre LED screen overlooking the gym floor. A waterfall feature. More than 400 pieces of equipment. Premium machines from brands including Panatta, Gym80, Watson, Maxpump, Jerai, Gymleco, Newtech and Mtorture.
Some Australian gyms may have had one or two pieces from these brands before. Oxygen brought them together at a scale most local gym-goers had never seen.
The location was also strategic. Hillcrest gives Oxygen access to Logan, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the broader South East Queensland market through major motorway connections.
This was never designed to be a small local gym.
It was designed to become a destination.
The Brief
Sunny and Alex came to Unreal Media with a clear goal and a hard deadline. They needed to open with a membership base large enough to prove the business model from day one. Not “enough to get started”, enough to justify the investment, cover the overheads, and demonstrate to the broader Australian market that the Hillcrest location was viable.
1,500 members was the number. At a premium price point, that kind of pre-launch commitment means the business is working before you serve your first protein shake. Miss it by half and you are running a facility that is fighting for survival while also trying to manage a complex, multi-level operation. The margin between those two outcomes is almost entirely a marketing problem.
The campaign had to do several things at once. Introduce a brand nobody had heard of. Justify a price point significantly higher than the local competition. Build enough genuine interest that people would hand over their credit card details for a gym they had never set foot in. And do all of this in the months between construction site and opening day.
Our team has direct experience in the fitness industry. We knew where prospective members tend to drop off in the decision process, and we built the campaign around those friction points.
Our Role
Unreal Media was brought in from the beginning.
This was not a standard filming job where we arrived after everything was finished, captured a few polished videos and left.
Our team handled the video production, photography, editing and video marketing strategy across the launch. The project was led by Jakob Quinn, Hayden Brinkley and Mikael, with Unreal Media working closely with the Oxygen team throughout the pre-launch and opening campaign.
As a Brisbane video production team, our role was to help Oxygen turn a construction site in Hillcrest into a campaign people could follow, believe in and eventually buy into.
The biggest challenge was trust.
People had heard big promises before. A world-class gym was coming. The equipment was different. The facility would be unlike anything else in the area.
But until people could see real progress, it was easy for the market to hesitate.
Our job was to make the launch feel real before opening day.
That experience mattered.
We understood how gym audiences respond to content, what creates excitement, where people lose trust, and how to use video to move someone from curious to ready to join.
The Pre-Launch Strategy
We started before the equipment arrived.
The first content we shot was construction footage. Not polished behind-the-scenes material, actual documentation of the build. The 15-metre screen being installed. The waterfall wall taking shape. The sheer volume of equipment coming through the loading dock. We treated the construction of the facility the way a documentary crew would treat the assembly of something significant, because that is exactly what it was.
We mixed that footage with material from Oxygen’s existing international locations. This solved the brand recognition problem directly. Instead of asking a Queensland audience to take our word for it that this was a world-class facility, we showed them the Kuwait flagship and the Riyadh location. We let the existing gyms do the selling.
The Instagram account was built in parallel with the physical build. Every week, Sunny and Alex’s audience watched the facility get closer to finished. By the time the doors opened, the local fitness community had been following the project for months. They weren’t joining a gym they had never seen, they were finally walking into a building they had been watching go up since the concrete was poured.
Paid social ran alongside the organic content, targeted to specific postcodes across Logan, Brisbane, and South East Queensland. A paid audience that has watched 30 to 60 seconds of a well-made facility video converts to pre-sale memberships at a significantly higher rate than one that has only seen a static ad. That is not a theory, it is what the numbers showed.
Using International Proof to Build Local Trust
One of the biggest challenges was brand recognition.
In the Middle East, Oxygen already had a reputation. In Australia, most people had never heard of it.
So we used the strength of the international brand to help build trust locally.
Footage from Oxygen’s Kuwait and Riyadh locations showed people what the brand was capable of. It gave the Australian audience a visual reference point for the standard Oxygen was bringing into the market.
That mattered because Oxygen was not asking people to join another basic gym.
They were asking people to buy into a premium fitness experience before the Australian location had officially opened.
The international content helped bridge that gap.
It showed that Oxygen had done this before.
Why Video Was So Important
For a premium launch, gym video production is not just about filming workouts.
The content has to build trust, explain the facility, create urgency and make people feel confident enough to join before they have trained there.
That was the job of the Oxygen campaign.
Some videos were designed to show construction progress.
Some were designed to highlight equipment.
Some were designed to introduce the scale of the brand.
Some were designed for paid ads.
Some were designed to give the local fitness community something worth sharing.
Every video had a role.
The content needed to look premium because the gym was premium. If the marketing looked cheap, it would have created a disconnect between the price point and the perceived value of the facility.
Oxygen was asking people to expect more.
So the content had to feel like more.
The Opening
City of Logan Mayor Jon Raven attended the opening.
That is worth stopping on. Mayors attend openings for businesses that matter to the region, projects that bring investment, employment, and infrastructure. When Logan City Council ran a story on the Oxygen launch, it moved the gym out of the “new business” category and into something more significant. It was a statement from local government that this was a real addition to the area, not just another gym in a suburb that already had gyms.
The open day video was produced to match the scale of the event. It has since generated over 100,000 views and more than 2,000 likes. For a single-location gym launch, not a global brand campaign, not a viral stunt, that is a result that reflects genuine public interest. People shared it because the facility looked like something worth sharing, and because the production treated the opening like the event it actually was.
The Council coverage gave the campaign something no ad budget can manufacture: independent validation. A local government telling the story is a different signal to the market than a brand telling its own story. Oxygen had both on launch day.
The Results
Oxygen Gyms Hillcrest hit its 1,500 pre-launch member target.
Since opening, the facility has grown to more than 2,000 members.
Across the campaign, Oxygen generated:
- 880,398 paid video views
- 285,367 paid campaign reach
- 21,198 100% video thruplays
- Organic views into the millions
- 4,294 new Instagram followers in 12 months
- 12.9k+ total Instagram followers
- 1,500 pre-launch members
- 2,000+ members after launch
These numbers matter because Oxygen was not competing as the cheapest gym in the area.
The campaign had to create enough value for people to commit to a premium facility before they had trained there.
That meant the content could not just look good.
It had to educate the market, show progress, prove the scale of the build, introduce the equipment, and keep people engaged through the launch period.
Becoming a Destination Gym
One of the clearest signs the campaign worked is how people treat Oxygen now.
Members are not only coming from Hillcrest or the surrounding suburbs.
People travel from the Gold Coast. From North Brisbane. From across Logan and South East Queensland.
They pass other gyms to train there.
That does not happen when a facility is just “pretty good.”
It happens when a gym becomes a destination.
The equipment, layout, lighting, scale and atmosphere have made Oxygen a place people want to experience, film in and talk about.
Influencers and serious lifters have continued to visit organically, creating their own content inside the facility and adding to the momentum.
That cycle is powerful.
The brand creates strong content. The facility attracts creators. Those creators publish more content. The gym becomes more visible. More people want to visit.
Why the Strategy Worked
The strategy worked because it solved the real problem.
The issue was not just awareness.
It was belief.
People needed to believe Oxygen was really coming. They needed to believe the facility would be different. They needed to understand why the price point made sense. They needed to see enough proof before they were willing to join.
So we built the campaign around proof.
Construction footage proved progress.
International footage proved the brand standard.
Equipment content proved the difference.
Opening day content proved demand.
Ongoing content proved the facility was continuing to grow after launch.
That is why the campaign did not rely on one viral moment. It built momentum over time.
Where It Is Now
Unreal Media has now worked with Oxygen for more than a year.
The launch campaign is complete, but the content partnership has continued.
Today, we continue to produce video and photo content across different parts of the facility, including department-specific content, facility showcases, member-focused content, campaign videos and ongoing social media assets.
Oxygen Gyms Hillcrest is now the proof point for the Australian market.
The brand’s plan is to open one or two premium locations per major city, and Unreal Media will continue to be involved in future Oxygen launches.
The next location will face a different version of the same challenge.
A new local market. A new audience. A new group of people who need to understand what Oxygen is and why it is different.
But this time, the brand has proof.
Hillcrest showed that the model works in Australia.
What Other Gyms Can Learn From This Launch
The biggest lesson from Oxygen is simple.
If you are launching a premium gym, the marketing has to match the product.
You cannot ask people to pay more than the local competition while presenting the brand like every other gym in the area.
Premium facilities need premium communication.
That does not mean every video needs to be overproduced. It means the content needs to be clear, consistent and strategic.
People need to see what makes the facility different.
They need to understand who it is for.
They need to see progress.
They need to see proof.
And if you are asking people to join before opening, they need to feel like they are part of something before they ever walk through the doors.
That is what Oxygen did well.
And that is what the content helped create.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you really need pro video for a gym launch?
At $15 a week, probably not. At a premium price point, the video has to match the product. You cannot ask someone to pay significantly more than the local competition and then show them shaky phone footage. The gap between what the facility offers and what the marketing communicates will cost you members before you ever open.
How did video help Oxygen reach 1,500 members before opening?
By solving the core problem, nobody knew what Oxygen was. We used footage from the international locations to show the brand’s standard, and we documented the Hillcrest build so people felt connected to the project before it was finished. A prospective member who has watched the facility being built for six months is a very different conversion problem from someone seeing an ad for the first time.
What was the Unreal Media role beyond production?
We came in as consultants, not just a camera crew. We mapped the content sequence from the first “coming soon” post through to the open day film, and shaped the campaign around what we know about how gym pre-sales work. The production was part of it. The strategy was the other part.
Will this work for a gym outside Brisbane?
Oxygen’s next Australian locations will be in other major cities and we will be part of those launches. The pre-production process is built for remote coordination. If you are planning a gym launch outside South East Queensland, the approach is the same, the locations just change.
Planning a gym launch or need content that actually communicates the value of your facility?
Unreal Media helps fitness brands create video content that builds trust, drives attention and supports real business growth.
Explore our gym video production services or learn more about our video production in Brisbane.
