FuelBand Has Landed
*Update: Agency that made the ad is R/GA. Interesting!
Nike has released their latest piece of technological marvel, the FuelBand. FuelBand —essentially Swoosh’s next generation of Nike+ technology— is a nifty, seemingly omniscient gizmo that provides you with feedback on how many calories you’re burning while working out AND while you’re just doing you. It measures your expended energy when you climb a set of stairs, walk to the bus stop, type on a keyboard, whatever. The technology is cored around two mighty impressive doohickeys/science things, namely: a three-axis accelerometer (to more effectively measure your body’s every movement); and a proprietary algorithm that takes into consideration your oxygen consumption, along with more standard fitness device metrics such as calories, steps taken and duration.
The above ad is the usual from Nike. Supremely well-packaged pop culture nods, interspersed with Nike’s own brightest moments and athletes that are at this point just as canonical to pop culture as the cover of “Abbey Road” or Homer Simpson. Again, just another gem in W+K’s(??)* crown as best agency out there.
The real intrigue about FuelBand is whether Nike will team up with Open Graph on Facebook or not. Facebook announced this week the 60 companies/apps that are teaming up with Open Graph in 2012 and there’s nary a Swoosh on the list. Already, there’s the standard “status updating” ability of the device, Nike has had this for years and was integral to Nike+ bands too. They promo-ed the hell out of the device with the #MakeItCount trending topic on Twitter, but I am surprised that there isn’t a deeper integration with Open Graph…for now. Or, and this is speculative conjecture on my part, maybe Apple* told Nike to hold back on fully integrating with Open Graph? There’s a growing rift between FB and Apple and this could very well be a tete a tete between those two monsters of e-commerce and community and Nike siding with Team iPhone. Which sorta makes sense until you remember that Facebook will likely have 1 billion users very soon. And again, I’m not seeing how there won’t be some deeper integration with Open Graph, and Facebook in general, in the not-too-distant future for the gadget. But, it’s kinda curious and fun to rumor-monger and say “huh” sometimes.
Additionally, Foursquare and Path teamed up with Nike. To what ends remains to be seen, “checking in” at stoplight on the corner of Damen and Wellington doesn’t really strike me as fun or, y’know, on my mind if I’m going for a run. So with working out it’ll be interesting to see if there’s another layer of seamless checking in or whatever for Path and Foursquare to harness.
*I’m not certain if that ad is W+K, but I’d be really surprised if it wasn’t. Again, it’s not W+K, but R/GA a London-based digital agency. Very impressive work.
*Apple and Nike have a very friendly relationship going back to Nike+ ver. 1.0 and Apple helped develop the Nike+ shoe chip, the Nike+ apps for iPhone, websites, etc.
