marketing and sales executives from Silicon Valley

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Goofy Accessory or Subtle Genius?

Fitbit is one of the best known pioneers in the smart fitness movement. I own a FitBit One, which is discussed here, and I recently saw an add for a product that immediately caused a love-hate reaction. 

The item in the image is the "Black/ Hot Pink Ribbon Wristband 2-Pack for Fitbit." It is basically a piece of cloth and rubber that holds a FitBit One. At first glance, however, it appears to be a piece of a scarf with a knot it it.

I mentioned that I have a love-hate relationship, and here's why -- the image makes the accessory REALLY look like a piece of $5 scarf that anyone could cut and use. A $5 scarf could be cut to make 10 of these, which merchants are selling for over $10 each. It looks cheap at first glance, but then I looked again and showed someone. 

The response? "That's pretty, and it looks way better than the cracking rubber case holding your FitBit One." She was right. it does look better than my aging and cracking rubber case, and it would sit on my wrist, instead of being stuck on my pockets which sometimes leaves me digging through the clothes hamper to find it. In fact, I had spend several moments thinking about buying a FitBit Flex or Charge over the holidays because I wanted the convenience of having a fitness tracker on the wrist, but I decided not to make the purchase.

The product suddenly made sense, and I wished I had one.

I still think that the product looks cheap and uses some terrible images, but I now believe that the product has a clear value proposition that I could really come to love. So this boils down to terrible presentation fighting high utility, an easily fixable problem.