Connected Living Takes Center Stage at MWC14

This article is a repost of an article I wrote for Tribal Worldwide's Smoke Signals.
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Yet again, Samsung comes out on top in this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with the launch of Galaxy S5 and Gear Fit – the world’s first curved AMOLED touch-screen display on a wearable device that allows you to track your fitness.

Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 has a number of advanced features. In addition to being water resistant and dust proof, it contains a fingerprint scanner that allows you to pay for shopping online and a camera that allows you focus after you’ve taken a picture. The smartphone will also provide extraordinarily fast network speeds by combining WiFi and 4G into a single stream. For an added human effect, the phone lets you track your own heartbeat – a world first, designed to work in conjunction with Samsung’s smart watches enabling wearers to better manage their fitness.

What truly makes the Galaxy S5 unique is how it implements the idea of connected living across all facets of your life: what you wear, where you live and/or work, how you receive goods, how you connect with others, how you travel, and how you purchase. For the first time, a phone is not just part of a family of devices but it is genuinely integrated managing a series of other screens, including your watch, fitness tracker, TV, fridge and washing machine. In other words, the Galaxy S5 operates as a remote control.

Implication: The trend of connected living will soon become part of our everyday reality.

Tapping our Digital Behaviors to Ignite Social Change

This is a repost of an article I wrote for my work blog in October on how digital technologies are being used to impact positive social change.
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The rise in digital technologies is empowering social change on an unprecedented global scale. While it is true that digital technologies fueling social change have allowed for some negative consequences such as increased surveillance and the ability to mobilize riots, this article is specifically focused around positive examples. This is evident in the use of social media to change regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, to monitor elections in Kenya, and to aid earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. One particularly interesting example is the Cairo Harass Map, which empowers women to report sexual harassment via email or SMS. The purpose of this project is to end the social acceptability of sexual harassment in Egypt.

Many social change projects focus around fundraising platforms that tap into existing digital behaviors:

• 50/50 is a 50-day creative collaboration fundraising campaign encouraging creative projects that generate awareness and raise money for the famine in East Africa. 100% of the donation goes directly to UNICEF. 
• Thanksforteaching.us is a 30 day campaign, hosted by tbd, dedicated to thanking teachers all over the world by sharing the actions, dreams and passions they inspired. This campaign aims to bring the spotlight back on the teachers that make our classrooms thrive in a time when funding for schools is being cut. 
• Africa Needs You is trying to raise money to combat the famine in East Africa through leveraging the cultural phenomenon of paid celebrity tweets and turning it upside down. It is asking people to challenge celebrities via twitter to donating a tweet – the equivalent of $10,000.
• Charity Swear Box looks for swear words on twitter. When a person enters his or her twitter name in the search box on the Charity Swear Box homepage, it checks all his or her past tweets for any sign of a swear word. These are added up to a suggested amount to donate to a favorite charity such as Unicef, WWF (World Wildlife Fund), and Feed the Children. 

Digital technologies are simplifying and enhancing the communication required to get social change moving. For example, in the past year, the Social Change Impact report stated:

• 110 million Americans expressed an opinion on an issue by posting a comment on a blog or Web site.
• 93.8 million Americans joined or created a group on a social networking site devoted to a cause.
• 82.1 million Americans texted to make donations, voted, organized a demonstration, etc. related to a specific cause or issue.

Digital technology is allowing people to get involved in social change issues faster and more frequently than ever before. And, digital technology as a conduit for social change is cross-generational. As noted in the Walden study: eight in 10 American adults, from Gen Y to through the Silent Generation agree that thanks to digital technology, people are getting involved in positive social change issues faster and more frequently than ever before. This belief is strongest among the Baby Boomers.

A number of brands are leveraging this momentum to align with specific social change campaigns:

• Levi’s WaterTank game was a Facebook game that inspired consumers to participate in online water-saving challenges. Each challenge completed “unlocked” water from the Levi’s WaterTank and ultimately supported Water.org’s life-saving clean water projects worldwide. This game has evolved into Levi’s Go Forth Platform.
• Aviva USA’s Status for Youth made the brand's new Facebook page a catalyst for good. "Status For Youth" asked people to donate a status update to a youth-related charity. In lending their voice, people also influenced the amount of grant money given to each charity.
• Pepsi Refresh is funding programs across a number of disciplines that “refresh” the world through local communities. Projects are focused around education, communities, art and music.
• Chase Community Giving’s American Giving Awards is Chase’s first-ever celebrity tribute to community heroes, offering 5 charities a chance to share $2MM in grants so they can continue their work helping others.
• Starbucks’s Create Jobs for USA is a partnership with Opportunity Finance Network to create and sustain jobs through providing capital grants to select Community Development Financial Institutions. Additionally, this platform wants to build a community of interested people via Facebook and Twitter to express opinions and ideas about to improve and take action in local communities.

As the world becomes increasingly more interconnected, it will become more important for brands to think about ways to incorporate social change platforms into their brand promise.

The Convergence of Fitness and Digital

Wow! It's been a while since I've had a chance to write anything. It's been a busy summer between moving from Minneapolis to Manhattan and starting a new job. Anyway, fall is finally here in New York and with it, I want to repurpose some blog posts I've been writing for my current employer. I hope you enjoy them! Here's the first one from August:
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Keeping fit while traveling has always been a bit of a challenge. While a lot of hotels have gyms and a person can always throw on sneakers and go for a run, it’s easy to lose focus on the road. Workouts get off track. And, it’s easy to get out of shape.

As noted in trendwatching’s 11 Crucial Trends to Watch for 2011 report, the convergence of wellness and health is an emerging consumer trend. Health has become as important as traditional status symbols and consumers expect health-related tools to “improve their quality of life, rather than merely treating illnesses and ailments.”

The convergence of fitness and digital platforms not only addresses consumers’ interest in improving their quality of life through wellness but taps into two seemingly opposed consumer trends: the increased interest in ultra-personalization and the emergence of inclusive, global communities of shared interests. Despite the obvious tensions between these two trends, fitness platforms appear to be capitalizing on the intersection of needs between the two.

Mobile apps are allowing for even more personalization and customization, giving customers added control of the information they receive, when, where and how they receive it. The ultra personalization trend has been instrumental in the creation of a number of fitness platforms:

• Nike+ is one of the most well-known running platforms. Using a tracking device within your shoe or another GPS-enabled device, it tracks each of your runs and provides an endless about of information about each run including maps, calories burnt, stride, etc.
• YogaTailor creates custom personalized yoga video workouts for you, maximizing the benefits within your available time and level of experience.
• Jog.fm helps you create a playlist to match whatever pace you want to run, walk or cycle at based on beats per minute (BPM). It takes the existing music in your library and mixes it according to your requested pace. While options exist for listening to others’ playlists, it still revolves mainly around your music, your playlist, and mostly your desired pace.

While people want to personalize their options for working out, they also want to share their experiences and get support from a community with shared interests. Brands are tapping into people’s need to have a community of support around them as they reach for their goals. This need is especially strong in the fitness category and can be the missing link in terms of exercise for a person who has to travel regularly. Fitness platforms are focusing on creating inclusive communities that can be accessed anytime, everywhere and are based on similar fitness interests and goals:

• Two weeks ago, Speedo rolled out their new platform, “Pace Club. Speedo’s Pace Club includes a mobile app that allows swimmers to sign up for training programs, log workouts, view professional athletes demonstrating proper technique and share their progress with friends through Pace Club’s virtual “Swim Team,” as well as on Facebook or Twitter.  Additionally, “Splash Tags” allow consumers to search for and review pools – as of launch, 3,500 pools had already been entered into the system, the most comprehensive directory in the country. There’s also a blog featuring content by Speedo athletes and a product widget showcasing relevant Speedo products.
• Endomondo is a social network for runners. At its core, it is a cross-platform running app with a huge network of fellow runners built in. It has apps across most mobile platforms and GPS-enabled devices including Garmin. With Endomondo installed on your mobile device, you can track where you run, how long you run, check your personal best times, and share them with friends. From the Endomondo site, you can view exercise summaries, issue invites and challenges to get your friends involved in your fitness push, and participate in site-wide challenges.
• Track-a-thon is an app developed by mcgarrybowen labs to support a runner’s fans. The runner downloads the app onto his or her iphone and then carries it with him or her throughout the race. The spectator can then visually track a person’s race progress along the course including runners’ distance, speed elevation and the music they are listening to (assuming the race allows music).

According to trendwatching, “the ‘consumerization’ of health means that more consumers will choose products with embedded health benefits that are actually well designed, desirable, accessible, fun, tasty, interesting or storied.” So, the next time you are going on a trip, consider checking out a few of these tools and see if you find it easier to stay in shape while on the road.