A Man Brand Case Study: Leo Results Fitness
Personal Trainer Leo Pinto standing outside of the gym
What is a Man Brand?
Personal Branding Photography has become the fastest growing industry in professional photography. I gravitated towards it because it includes subjects I love photographing; lifestyle photography, headshots , product photography, architectural photography, and promotional videos. Most of all, it gives me a chance to become close with clients and see their businesses grow over time.
Rebranding myself as a Branding Photographer made sense! As I started doing market research, I noticed the top branding photographers in my area were nearly all women, photographing other women!
I love working with women. But surely a man must also need a brand! I decided I would test the waters and see what branding photography for men would look like. First I looked back into my past, and found some great examples of men I had been helping with branding in the past.
For this, my first Man Brand Featured Client, I am taking you back to NYC where I lived before the pandemic. One of my O.G. Personal Branding Photography clients is personal trainer Leo Pinto, who has a successful business in NYC and online called Leo Results Fitness.
Creating Video Content for Social Media
Leo wanted to spice up his social media with video content. We decided to create a series of workout videos with a handful of his clients. At the time, Instagram had a time limit for videos: 30 seconds for posts. We kept all of the workout videos short and concise to fit that restriction.
We also used the videos on Leo’s Youtube Channel, where we could have longer content and show the full width and height ratio of the videos.
Note: Nowadays, Instagram allows for longer videos. Instagram reels and stories are all the rage, inspired by the popularity of TikTok. If I was to recreate this series for Leo today, I would make vertical versions of the videos for those platforms, as well as for Youtube Shorts. But in the “old days,” horizontal video was still the standard, and that’s why the videos I am sharing look that way!
The Promotional Video
When I make a promotional video for a branding client, it is typically to go on their website or YouTube channel. In this case, we created a promo video to introduce Leo’s series of short workout videos.
Personal Branding Video featuring personal trainer Leo Pinto doing exercises in a gym and explaining how diet and exercise promote longevity.
Leo’s Workout Videos
Here are a couple of the short workout videos we created for Leo’s Instagram, Facebook and Youtube accounts. I kept the main action in the center of the video because Instagram posts would clip the edges. Today I would make alternate versions in vertical format.
A 27 second video with Leo’s client Anna demonstrating a workout for glutes, hamstrings and biceps in a NYC gym with a weight bench and dumbbells.
21 second Leo Results Fitness video with his client Pamela demonstrating a splits and squats exercise at a NYC gym.
Personal Branding Photography
Leo and I had lots of fun building his brand. I left NYC just before the pandemic hit, in 2019. He took his business completely onto Zoom during the pandemic, and is currently so busy that he doesn’t need to advertise anymore. That’s the place we all want to be, where word of mouth does the work for us!
Here’s a couple still images of Leo. If you are a man with a brand who wants to stand out from the competition, get in touch! I am currently living in Western Massachusetts but I still have clients in NYC and Colorado, and offer workshops and retreats around the world.
