Sometimes it’s not better to do it yourself.
As you may know we’re big fans of Nike+. That it managed to win the grand prix at Cannes provides a big ray of hope for our industry. It really was (and is) a stroke of marketing genius. It’s probably the single best example of marketing as a service in the world today.
So it’s probably all too easy, crass and low to critique it, but as the saying goes, familiarity breeds…well you get the idea.
The thing is that the idea of Nike+ is pure genius, but the execution betrays one of the flaws (IMO) of the typical agency model. Agencies – even digital ones – developed under the assumption that execution was tied to conception. It has to be, otherwise the agency doesn’t get paid. It’s a sad state of affairs that most agencies still get paid for how long they spend building things or doing things, and the ideas get thrown in for “free.”
Obviously there are a whole host of problems with this model, but in the digital arena, one of the larger ones is the over reliance upon internal production skills and, more damagingly, an insular view of production that is at odds with the Web 2.0 ethos.
In many ways, Nike+ is another social network – yet it’s one built entirely from scratch. Rather than making it a group within a larger – already existing network like Facebook, it has created an isolated network with no ties to any other groups.
Similarly, its functionality also appears have been developed separately from already existing functionality. Rather than simply using Map My Run for user generated routes (and community) they chose to roll their own.
Finally, because it does not appear to have been built as a platform, it’s unable (at present) to leverage other data streams that might add more utility to its users. For example, a smarter version might draw in data from weather.com, so I could reference my performance with temperature or humidity. By not being a platform, it also misses benefitting from crowd-sourced development that could enrich Nike+ in ways that the designers never envisioned.
All of these factors create a more limited vehicle than would have developed otherwise. They also create a less effective marketing vehicle. As we proved in our launch, a huge benefit of Web 2.0 services is that they have communities and audiences built in. Thus, if you “adopt” a Web 2.0 service, you can also expect some part of the audience to then become part of your audience. Using Web 2.0 services delivers increased exposure for free!
It’s quite certain that development would have proceeded quite differently if the agency didn’t have its own developers and designers. In that scenario, the producer would have been delighted to discover that most of the functionality of Nike+ could be delivered through co-opting and mashing up other services. Not only would this have dramatically lowered the cost and time to produce, it would have also resulted in a richer more effective product.