Free Apps, The New Billboard

It was Monday morning and the mundane task of macheteing my way through the jungle that is my inbox was interrupted by a long IM monologue from my regular weekend squash partner. I knew this mini novel couldn’t be intended to gloat since I had been victorious in the weekend challenge. I clicked on the flashing message expecting to read about some feeble excuse as to why he had lost and the usual challenge to a re-match.

 Instead I was bombarded with links and enthused conversation around Jonathan’s latest Blackberry application. The app in question was MiCoach, an app developed by Addidas, which offers live training as you work out. It seemed interesting and I promised that I would be happy to hear more before our re-match next weekend. This, however, didn’t stop Jonathan from contacting me every morning with the stats from the previous days run.

When Saturday rolled round and I finally saw what all the fuss was about, I couldn’t help but join Jonathan in his enthusiasm. MiCoach, with its ability to map the route run, determine the elevation of your run, distance run, time taken, calories burnt and numerous other measurements, really captured my imagination. I immediately downloaded this free app, and began running to my favourite tunes. My playlist was interrupted every 0.5km by MiCoach, which updated me with time, distance, speed and calories. It also provided coaching throughout the run, telling me when to speed up or slow down in order to ensure I reached my goal of running the Gun Run half marathon.

All this functionality in a free app, of course one can’t help wondering what the catch was. When did the demo end and how much would I be expected to pay to continue using this app? As it turned out, there was no catch and MiCoach the app continues to be freely available on both Blackberrys and iPhones with GPS.

Addidas’ motivation for the development of this free app became evident when Jonathan informed me he had ordered new Addidas running shoes and a full wardrobe of MiCoach gear. The MiCoach app acts as a gateway into an entire Adidas community online. This community comprises runners, cyclists, and a host of other active people who enjoy the coaching and the ability to track their efforts. Logging on to the MiCoach micro site to see additional information synced from your phone exposes one to a community that provides tips and tricks for training, new routes to try and a host of other useful information all the while interacting with an Addidas-branded site.

A pre-existing, fiercely loyal community has congregated naturally in an online space through, generating significant earned media for the brand and allowing Adidas to leverage this opportunity to spread the message about MiCoach’s offering. By offering a value-added service that spoke directly to the needs and passions of the community, Addidas has captured themselves the most trusted of spokespeople: the average weekend sports warriors, just like you and me.

MiCoach has generated a significant volume of online conversation - 49 300 blog posts written, 470 user-generated videos uploaded, 43 news articles written and 14 900 discussions currently underway in online forums.

As Addidas captures more information about my exercising habits, they have begun to target the ads shown on their micro site to ensure I’m only exposed to products that might maximize my exercising experience. While researching this blog post, MiCoach suggested that, since we are moving into summer in Cape Town, maybe a sleeveless running vest would be more comfortable. Now that they mention it maybe it would. I wonder how much postage and packaging is.