Page 131 of Just One Fake Date

“Brilliant,” Theo said. “Talk about visibility.”

“And brand recognition,” Cassie said, impressed despite herself.

Shannyn had done five mock-ups of the billboard, one with each shot. The logo ran in a different color on each one. She clicked through them slowly.

“We would seriously stop traffic,” Damon said.

Cassie sat down again. “The billboard could stay up for months with the same image,” she noted. “We could change it bimonthly or even quarterly. And I’d love to have that photographic stock as a resource for all of our other materials.”

“I love it all,” Kyle said.

“You just want to be first,” Theo said, razzing him a little.

“Damn straight I do.”

“We have to know the traffic,” Cassie said. “So we can decide if it’s worth it.”

“Doesn’t the whole city pass through Times Square?” Kyle asked.

“And every single tourist,” Damon agreed.

“Are they our target market?” Theo asked.

“They could be, if we offered day passes,” Cassie said.

“Make deals with hotels,” Theo said. “So that their guests can come here.”

“Just how expensive is that real estate?” Ty asked, the inevitable reality check.

“Very,” Shannyn ceded. “I love this idea, though, and so I tried to think of a way to make it work. I had a look at some of your competition to see how they’re leveraging their brands and noticed that you could move into the virtual realm more aggressively than you have to date. You have a YouTube channel that you don’t use much, but that and your other social media could be used to market the club to a much broader audience.”

“Ireallylike her,” Meesha murmured approvingly.

“You could market to a virtual audience, sharing the expertise and the experience of Flatiron Five Fitness to anyone in the world with a phone or an internet connection.” Shannyn went through a series of slides featuring images of Cassie. The logo wasCardio with Cassie, with an F5F logo in the bottom corner. “Excuse the graphics,” Shannyn said with a smile. “They’re really not my strength. My point is that if you recorded, for example, a thirty-minute aerobics lesson each weekday, by the end of a month, you’d have twenty episodes. At the end of a year, you’d have two hundred and sixty of them.”

There was a murmur of interest as she moved to another batch of slides, and Cassie saw that all the guys were sitting up straighter. The next slide featured Brooke, one of the nutritionists, and was calledBreakfast with Brooke. “I was struck by how attractive and personable many of your instructors are,” Shannyn said. “You could partner with them for podcasts or video sequences highlighting their expertise, building their visibility and status to draw traffic back to the club. What about a fifteen minute daily feature about starting with a healthy breakfast, maybe featuring an ingredient each day?”

“And you put that in the metadata and search terms,” Meesha said with excitement. “So anyone searching on breakfast smoothies with wheat germ finds us.”

“And we sell branded blenders and lidded cups for riding the subway in the new F5F online store,” Kyle said.

“And you advertise those blenders and cups during the broadcast, then subsequently target the people who watched that episode,” Meesha said.

“You can do that?” Kyle asked.

Meesha smiled as she cracked her knuckles. “Stand back.”

“And it doesn’t matter where that person is located,” Shannyn said. “He or she can experience the Flatiron Five Fitness brand and become loyal to it from anywhere in the world.”

Theo tapped on the table. “Once we have enough programming, we could look at starting a cable channel.”

“And we would manage who can advertise on our spots,” Cassie said.

“It’s brilliant,” Damon said and they all nodded agreement.

“Taking the brand national without moving a thing,” Kyle said with admiration. “No real estate, Ty. The next level with no risk.”

Ty didn’t respond to that jibe, but was quickly making notes.

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