Fyreside Newsletter - 1/5/26

Hey Reader,

It's the first Monday of the New Year. Congratulations, you made it! The first "real" week of the year tends to come with all sorts of "New Year, New Me"-isms which, in turn, tend to bring about the "New Year, New You" marketing schemes. Today, I want to dissect one for you.

There are plenty of think pieces about whether or not New Years Resolutions are worth making, I'm not going to write one. If you crave that analysis, here's a lengthy one from Britannica.com. Your opinion on the positives and negatives of resolutions won't matter for this newsletter. Today, my goal is to show you how easy it is for a marketing scheme to become disgustingly villainous by, either knowingly or unknowingly, preying on our vulnerability.

"We all know this isn't better, right?"

That's a real thing I said in a work meeting for a job I'd be fired from less than a year later. We were switching our membership benefits program to save money. For more than a decade, members were given the same discount, but post-covid, it was determined that this discount was too costly for the business. The decision was made to change to a point system which offered rewards of little-to-no cash value in lieu of a flat discount.

When this change was introduced to the management team, we were asked to brainstorm ways to introduce this change to the community. After reviewing the details of the new program and crunching numbers to determine the change in value for members I offered my two cents:

"We all know this isn't better, right? Like, this is a worse deal for members than the old model. I think we'll have more success if we tell our members the reason for this change. If we explain that this change was made for the sake of longevity, I think the community will understand. If we pitch this as an improvement, I fear that they'll see through it and feel that we're trying to pull a fast one on them.

Lol, oops.

"We're doing this for them!"

That's a real thing said to me in a work meeting by the boss who would fire me less than a year later. That's also a common, albeit bullshit, excuse. Umbrella term "execs" love to create a perception of selflessness and empathy to shelter bad decisions. However, "I did this because I knew you wanted me to" is not selfless, it's narcissistic. You should never assume what your customers want. You should ask them, you should provide space for them to tell you, but you shouldn't assume it.

That's what my former boss was doing. They justified a decision that was made without external input by assuming the desires of our community. Their arguments included:

People like rewards programs!
People want to use their phone to manage their rewards!
People will be excited to earn new rewards that have not previously been offered!
People aren't attached to the current model!

Interesting that none of those assumptions were things that would actually benefit the customer. See, it's easy to assume what people may "like" or "want," but it's incredibly difficult to make assumptions as to what will actually help people. You really need to ask them.

There's this quote from known-Nazi Henry Ford that gets referenced often: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." This quote is dumb and bad, and it wasn't actually said by known-Nazi Henry Ford. In fact, it's first attribution to Ford comes from a 2001 issue of UK publication Marketing Week. The mentality that a business owner knows the customers desires better than the customer was a marketing scheme from the start.

Also, Henry Ford was a literal Nazi.

January Entrapment

I said this newsletter was going to dissect a New Years Resolution marketing scheme and I haven't mentioned it since. Thank you for playing along. I'm going to do that now.

This marketing scheme comes to us via the former employer I referenced above who is, once again, assuming they know what their customers want. The business is a boutique fitness facility that makes most of its revenue from membership fees. Their number one priority is increasing membership numbers and trying to lose as few as possible. When I worked there, they had a 10-day cancellation clause in the membership, meaning you needed to cancel 10 days before your next bill or you would be automatically billed for a final month. I haven't worked there in 5 years, but recent negative google reviews tell me that this clause is still currently in use.

So, here's the special January deal from my former employer

On the surface, this doesn't seem that icky, but I'm hoping the background info in this newsletter helps you see through it. Can you tell why this deal is bad?

Here's why this sucks.

First, I think locking people into a 12-month membership to a fitness facility in January is exploitative. It feels like common knowledge that the number one New Years Resolution in America is to exercise more, but here's a link if you need a source. Here's another link that shows only 9% of Americans will keep their resolutions for a full year. In fact, most resolutions are abandoned by February. The assumption is that people want to work out more in January, so we should provide them access to our facility, but that's not what they need. And even if it's what they want, I promise they won't want it after you slap them with February's no-longer-free membership bill.

Second, and for this one you really need the background info, making the last month free is a sneaky way to generate auto renewals. Remember that pesky 10-day cancellation clause I mentioned? Let's say you're locked in a 12-month contract. Your first month was free, but you've been getting hammered by bills every month since even though you haven't used the service. Suddenly, a full calendar year later, the bill doesn't come! Will you remember to return to the facility to cancel your membership at least 10 days before January 1st? That's just barely north of legal entrapment, imho.

Lastly, and here's the thing that upsets me the most, this deal doesn't do anything to actually help the people it's meant for. Again, there's plenty of statistics that explain the lifespan of a New Years Resolution, this isn't new information. If the goal is genuinely to help people with their resolution, why isn't there an onboarding phase? Why isn't there a roadmap to success? Why wouldn't you just give everyone a chance to try something for free to see if they'll stick with it? Because that doesn't generate memberships, that's why.

Final Thoughts

I'm hard on all of my former employers, but I want to give the benefit of the doubt this time and say that this deal was likely concocted with good intention. I'll call a spade a spade and say that paying for 10 months of a 12 month membership is good economics. But that doesn't make this good deal more than a smarmy marketing scheme. Bahnfyre PR exists to raise the bar. Let's make 2026 the year we start calling out smarmy marketing schemes.