UP CLUB
Repositioning Up Club (Up World’s marketing members club) from a ‘nice community’ to a must-join career accelerator for ambitious marketers.
LOTTIE UNWIN, FOUNDER, UP WORLD
“Gus helped us get brutally clear on why people weren’t prioritising an Up Club membership.
The work reshaped our positioning, turned it into a far more compelling offer for ambitious marketeers, and has been a key driver in getting us back on track to hit our growth targets”
The challenge
UP Club, a paid-for members club for marketers, faced a familiar problem. People liked the idea, but when budgets or time were tight, it wasn’t compelling enough to justify paying for either individual marketers or team budget holders.
As a result, growth was slowing, and sign-ups were becoming harder to secure.
Approach
We ran a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews with current members and marketers who matched UP’s target profile but hadn’t yet joined.
We focused on three things:
the functional, emotional and social “jobs” they were hiring a membership to do.
What other resources and workarounds were non-members using to accelerate their careers, and why?
The barriers stopping them from joining, from perceived value through to motivations, constraints and employer support.
Impact
We found a clear perception gap: while UP Club was well-liked, it was largely seen as a “vibey community for marketers” rather than something worth prioritising when time or budgets were under pressure. The value felt intangible, making the decision to join easy to delay or deprioritise.
We helped Up Club reposition their membership away from a loosely defined community and towards an essential career-accelerating tool or ‘unfair advantage’ for ambitious marketing professionals, centred on concrete benefits, such as practical capability building, increased confidence and professional credibility.
As a result, the proposition became much more valuable and easier to justify for marketers, contributing to waitlists that are now overflowing with applications.