Strategy Lab · Gyms

Twenty squats. One free week. Do 20 Squats: a gym marketing idea where AI counts the reps

A neighbourhood gym window in Heraklion at dusk, with people walking past on the pavement. On the upright screen behind the glass, a pose skeleton halfway through a squat and a "0/20" counter.

Needs a camera and a bit of floor space. There's a no-camera version too.

Space: start and pause · Esc: turns the camera off

The image never leaves your device

The demo didn't load. The description below tells you what you'd have seen.

The demo in words: the challenge is 20 clean squats in 40 seconds. If you allow the camera, a pose model finds 33 points of your body in every frame, inside your browser, and a counter judges every rep by the knee angle: only full squats, hips down to knee height, count; half squats get "Half squats don't count", and cues say "Chest up" or "Lower". Nothing is uploaded or stored. Without the camera, you hold a button or the Space key to squat and a drawn skeleton shows the movement; an example set shows it doing a full set. At the end you see your reps, your time and a form score; at 20/20 an example QR pass appears, and below 20 you see the ad that would invite you back to finish the set. With "No timer" there is no clock.

A kiosk with a camera in the gym's window. A passer-by does 20 squats, the AI checks depth and form, and a QR code hands them a week's pass. Try it here with your device's camera.

Sector: Gyms
Mechanics
Demo engine: Sensor (camera, pose)
Complexity
Production cost

Decode

How it got you

Do 20 SquatsPlay → Decode → Deploy

Mechanism: Gm · Snackable game + Sv · Self-visualisation + Qr · Code as content
Psychology: We value what we earn with effort: the IKEA effect (Norton, Mochon & Ariely, 2012). And "17/20" works because the closer the goal, the harder it pulls (Kivetz, Urminsky & Zheng, 2006). Norton, Mochon & Ariely (2012), Journal of Consumer Psychology · Kivetz, Urminsky & Zheng (2006), Journal of Marketing Research
Platform signal: Friends film friends. Every set in front of the window is a Reel you didn't pay for, and the QR code walks people from the pavement to the front desk.
Honest range: 15–30% of people who claim the pass use it · 15–30% of those become members Typical range for a pilot in a Greek SME · Netex estimate

I want one of these for my brand

Deploy

How we'd build it for you

Who it's forFor gyms and studios with a window on a street, in a shopping centre or near a university.

A kiosk with a screen and camera in the window. A passer-by does 20 squats, the AI checks depth and form, and a QR code gives a seven-day pass.
The same game on the web, for Instagram traffic: "Can you do 20 clean squats in 40″? The AI is counting."
After the set, a form tip from your trainers. That builds authority, not just excitement.
A neighbourhood leaderboard: which neighbourhood does the cleanest sets this week.
People who didn't redeem see this the next day: "You did 17/20. Come and finish the set."

Channels and tech

Channels: Window kiosk · Instagram · pass delivered by Viber or WhatsApp
Tech: MediaPipe Pose Landmarker in the browser, a kiosk-mode screen with a camera, a QR code, a simple CRM table. No image goes to the cloud.
Complexity: 2–3/5
Production cost: €€ plus kiosk hardware · Netex estimate

What to expect, honestly

We don't promise viral. We promise a mechanism you can measure.

People who claim the pass and use it 15–30%
Of those, people who become members 15–30%

most likely on a first run · A first run usually lands in the lower half of the range.

Guardrails

The camera only opens on an explicit action, and the window says so on a sign.
No images stored. The board keeps only a nickname, a neighbourhood and a score.
It isn't medical advice. Form guidance comes from your trainers.
Anyone walking past behind the player is neither recorded nor counted.
Permission from the shopping centre or the municipality for a camera kiosk.

Who did it before us

We couldn't find a published gym campaign with exactly this mechanism. The closest relatives:

Third-party results are mostly self-reported, from award entries and vendors. They show a mechanic can work, not what it will do for you.

Year	Who	What they did	Result
pre-2022 · international	Trolls World Tour · WebAR on the pack	Scanning the pack launched AR mini-games in the browser.	60% of sessions lasted over 5 minutes vendor figure · 8th Wall
2023 · US	McDonald's "Grimace's Birthday"	A free retro-style browser game for a mascot's birthday.	No numbers published; it became a cult object press report · Dexerto
2022 · US	Coinbase "Bouncing QR"	A 60″ ad showing nothing but a bouncing QR code.	20M+ visits in one minute press report · Decrypt

From marketing to AI

The same eye, on a different job.

The AI that counts squats "sees": it finds points in an image and measures distances and angles. The same family of technology inspects parts on a production line, using cameras that are already there.

Camera frame
Points found: joints, or the edges of a part
Angles and distances measured
A rep counted, or a part passed

Mechanism Sprint

What would a passer-by do to earn your pass?

Mechanism Sprint: designed, produced and measured in 10 working days. From €1,500 plus production and hardware.

I want one of these for my brand The whole Strategy Lab

We reply within one working day.

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