Out of Fuel

The Rise and Fall of the Nike FuelBand

On February 22nd 2012 Nike introduced the FuelBand. Technophiles and advertising folk unanimously applauded the well orchestrated release of this first mainstream piece of wearable technology.

I got my FuelBand shortly after it’s release at SXSW and was overwhelmed with nerdom at this marvelous shiny new object. I must admit I had no real intention of using it as an activity tracker, it was more the concept itself that struck my fancy.

I intuitively understood that this was the beginning of something much bigger. It was for me the ambient kind of tracking that would finally render errant self reporting obsolete.

A few other lesser brands had similar devices that were better designed and more robust, holistic platforms but it took the strength of the Nike brand to launch wearable technology into culture.

The Nike brand spun together the perfect combination of cultural relevance, social media behaviors and the secret sauce called “Plus” to launch a category called Wearables.

The FuelBand was never a great device. My unit broke twice days after I got it, then had to be replaced three more times after that.

It didn’t matter to me, I didn’t buy a performance device I bought into a concept.

The quantified self movement is not meant to be about the devices you wear but about how ambient an individual or herds of individuals could track all of their behaviors and then to see it intelligently aggregated in a way that has value to even the most sluggardly of beings.

Nike was the only brand platform that could launch this concept. Nike makes high performance gear that everyone wears. White men cant jump but love to look like they can.

Inactive people will slap on that swoosh because of the heightened affinity for the brand and the desire to feel active simply by wearing the gear actual active people wear.

The Nike FuelBand was the perfect storm to introduce the wearables concept to the world in a way no other brand could and the demise of the FuelBand is no failure but a huge win for Nike as a brand that can launch a concept like activity to a relatively inactive audience.

An audience that aspires to everything the Swoosh represents.

It is the superhuman strength of LeBron James, the mamba-like agility of Kobe Bryant, the perception of the perseverance of adversity that was Lance Armstrong, the precision of Tiger Woods and the sheer dominance and nobility of Michael Jordan.

It was the persona that Nike attached to an inferior device that was nothing more than a glorified pedometer. The FuelBand wasn’t a product launch it was a campaign for a new industry category.

Much of Nike’s high performance gear is consumed by people who rarely break a sweat and when they do it is likely from eating spicy food and not climbing an extra 10 flights of stairs after running a marathon.

The Nike+ platform became the platinum standard for a category that needed a leader to show them how it’s done, not from a technology perspective but how to brand and market a new consumer technology to an audience that thinks watching people “Do It” translates into actually doing it.

The FuelBand was brave. Brave enough to create a branded metric that didn’t need any real definition. Brave enough to create a mantra and a hashtag that inspired real engagement. Brave enough to run a Human Race that seemed larger than life and brave enough to lead the entry into a new category that required the bravado of a brand like Nike to introduce it to the world.

The shuttering of the FuelBand line is no failure at all because for the category Nike #MadeItCount.

See my article from March 22nd 2012 on the Active Graph