Does it pay to get irrationally excited about wearables? It used to, but not so much anymore. But I don’t let a paycheck stand in the way of serving the South African consumer – except when paying work sucks up all my time and I can’t feed this website with content, also I’m not about that burnout life anymore. So I woke up to this email yesterday:
http://sportsmanswarehouse.createsend1.com/t/i-e-ndutiyk-bdhhddlly-r/
Following on from my story from last week about how Huawei finally got its Vitality act together, this is a great marketing move. (Some inside baseball for people who don’t know: that mailer is a paid-for campaign.) And one that syncs up nicely with the point I made in my weekly podcast as well.
(You can listen to the full episode on the top right of this page, or search OVRCLKD_ZA on your preferred service.)
Fitness is a transaction. It’s a deal you make with your body to live a full life. You put in the work and your body responds in positive ways. Getting extra benefits from your training is a great sweetener and now you can do that with Huawei devices. That’s awesome.
Hopefully Under Armour gets back on the Vitality bandwagon to help support its eventual connected shoe push into the SA market. The MapMyRun integrated range launches on 1 February 2019 with the HOVR Infinite running shoe. I’m a big fan of Under Armour apparel and own a pair of HOVR Sonic which have quickly become my go-to race shoe for Two Oceans Half Marathon on Easter weekend.
Under Armour briefly got the MapMyFitness app onto Vitality last year, but that seems to have been removed. Anyway, the system uses a Bluetooth sensor in the shoe to track steps, cadence and other running metric you get from a foot pod. You can pair up a separate heart rate monitor for serious insight into your Park Run. I’m very happy with my HOVR Sonics (HOVR is UA’s proprietary energy recovery midsole technology that is on par with Adidas Boost and Nike React in performance) but covet these Infinites like you wouldn’t believe. Gear obsession is real.
No, I’m certainly not being paid for plugging these products (donations are, however, welcome) and, yes, this may just be some shameless podcast promotion. It’s also a little consumer advice from your someone who gets irrationally excited for good deals. I still wear my Fitbit Ionic because it gives me just enough balance between fitness tracking, battery life and smartwatch functions, and I got it for “free.”
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