CrossFit’s Ed Morrison Shares His Take on Setting Up Lines of Communication and Growing Engagement in the Oceania Region

CrossFit has experienced rapid growth in the Oceania region over the last 18 months, with active affiliate numbers skyrocketing by over 15 percent during this time. Leading the way in this region is CrossFit’s Oceania Manager Ed Morrison, who was first brought in as Country Manager of Australia and New Zealand in October 2020. With the recent explosion of growth in Oceania, CrossFit has increased its representation in the region, with individual Country Managers now found in New Zealand, Korea and Japan, and a Country Manager who oversees South Asian countries including India, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. As the Oceania Manager, Morrison supports the Oceania country managers as well continuing in his role as Australia’s Country Manager. This content is available exclusively to Members Become an member and start enjoying full access to all our community and sports content, and an ad-free experience. PROMO Exclusive content Ad-Free web/app experience Comments on articles Exclusive 15% WIT discount $1 per month for the first 4 months, $8 each month after Get Started for $1 Exclusive content Ad-Free web/app experience Comments on articles Exclusive private Facebook Group Regular coffee breaks hang outs Exclusive 15% WIT discount Get Started $5/month billed annually Already a member? Log In. The Morning Chalk Up caught up with Morrison to discuss how he and his team are supporting affiliate owners in the Oceania region during this rapid growth phase and the strategies CrossFit has put in place to build a sense of community in the region. Setting up lines of communication and understanding what people wanted was on the top of the agenda, when Morrison took on the role as Country Manager of Australia and New Zealand. “The timing of that was only about a month or two after Eric (Roza) had come in as the CEO of CrossFit, and naturally that was a challenging time for CrossFit as an organization and our entire ecosystem, given the events a few months prior to that,” explains Morrison. “There was a real distance that was felt either real or imagined between the (Oceania) affiliate owner(s) and CrossFit HQ. That’s the tyranny of distance, that there just wasn’t local representation of (CrossFit) HQ within Australia and New Zealand, except for the seminar staff that were responsible for teaching the Level 1s and Level 2s.” “My goal was to provide a go-between the affiliate owners and the community (in Australia and New Zealand), and the teams in the States,” reflected Morrison. Morrison explains further that before his posting as Country Manager: “A lot of people would find themselves emailing the (CrossFit HQ) Affiliate team or emailing the Games team, or the Education team, all of which are based in America, and there’s just challenges that came with that. First of all there’s a time zone piece to it, and second of all there was a little bit of local knowledge. A lot of people take for granted that you will understand XYZ.” Connecting affiliate owners to one another was a priority for Morrison, given that the Oceania region spans several time zones and vast distances, explains Morrison: “The goal is to bring affiliate owners together both on a small and a large scale. We started with some events that were really just about everyone being able to be in the same room as much as possible and be around each other just for some emotional nourishment as much as anything else, hey you’re not alone in this. That would be either through affiliate gatherings which we try to host at events where there would be a large affiliate population (like) Semifinals and other large events.” “On a smaller scale we try to host local events when we’re in a state (for) things like Level 1s and Level 2s…Last year (in Adelaide, South Australia) we had some affiliate owners together for a barbeque… we just talked shop about how everything was going on.” In addition to the in-person catch ups, CrossFit HQ offers several online programs aimed to bring affiliate owners together, Morrison shares: “We’ve got the (worldwide) Roundtables program, where affiliate owners can sign up and they can touch base with other affiliate owners going through similar things, that’s a bi-weekly thing that they can do.” CrossFit HQ also hosts webinars that affiliate owners can jump onto. “Most recently we did four webinars in the lead up to the CrossFit Open. We had really nice attendance from our Australian and New Zealand affiliate owners,” reports Morrison. Recently, CrossFit HQ announced a new initiative, Regional Roundtables, but there is limited information regarding this program at this time. Expanding CrossFit Education throughout Oceania is another focus for Morrison: “It’s not lost on me that we distribute the courses evenly,” he said “We’re now in March 2023 so it’s a little bit too far gone to blame COVID for everything. But certainly getting over to South Australia and Western Australia during COVID was a huge challenge. That’s why the CrossFit online course was released, but there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be visiting those places more frequently (in the future).” shares Morrison. Oceania’s post-COVID growth is well above the global average. Morrison explains that CrossFit HQ uses three metrics to gauge growth in a region: “The first thing is definitely affiliate numbers, and really pleasingly Oceania has had some really good growth over the last one and a half years, (during) that post-COVID period.” The second metric is the number of people actually doing CrossFit. Morrison explains; “This is a difficult thing for us to measure because memberships at gyms are not something that gyms report back to us. But, we can assume that because there are more affiliates out there, then there is also growth in the number of people doing CrossFit.” “The third metric we operate with is affiliate engagement. So making sure that affiliates are engaging with services we run or events that we run like the Affiliate Gatherings, the CrossFit Open, Roundtables, using the Affiliate Partner Network and we have data on that to suggest that it’s going in the right direction,” said Morrison. Morrison explains: “For example in Australia, we had an 11 percent increase compared to last year in participation in the CrossFit Open. And we also had 275 of the 506 gyms with 25 people or more registered…(which is) sort of a bit of a gold standard for us.” Oceania in total had an increase of 19 percent in terms of participation in the Open. So that’s a really nice precursor for us and of things to come. Because that’s the metric that will shift first. Opening a business doesn’t happen overnight. But people being interested in CrossFit and being interested in signing up for this Open thing, that’s a decision that tells us that there’s more and more people taking an interest in CrossFit, so that was really pleasing. When asked what’s in store for the Oceania region for the year ahead, building a sense of connection and community to the region remains a top priority, as Morrison shares: “We are trying to increase the amount of in-person events that we’re having. I don’t want to hit that COVID button too much, but the reality is it has been a difficult time even throughout 2022, to have in-person events and to be really confident that we could hold them for the community. That’s something we’ll be doing more and more of. The bottom line: CrossFit has experienced promising growth over the last 18 months in the Oceania region. During this time Morrison and the Oceania Country Managers, have worked hard to set up lines of communication between CrossFit HQ and the affiliates, as well as bringing affiliates owners together in their local communities. While there’s no concrete evidence linking Morrison’s strategies to the growth in the region, there is definitely a strong correlation. Having a CrossFit representative that lives in your part of the world and understands the daily challenges an affiliate owner in the region faces is a huge step in the right direction.

CrossFit’s Ed Morrison Shares His Take on Setting Up Lines of Communication and Growing Engagement in the Oceania Region

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