'You Are What You Do' Is Premise of Strap, Miner of Wearable Data
Strap is focused on personalizing experiences using passively collected data. Credit: Courtesy STRAP
Steve
Caldwell had a mobile software development shop in Vicksburg, Miss., doing
mainly government and military contract work, when his wife bought him a Pebble
smartwatch for Christmas in 2013. It changed his life, and might change
marketing.
"Being
a geek at heart, I started writing apps for it," he said, which led to
"thinking through things like app monetization for wearable developers and
ad networks for wearables."
Within
months, he and his software-development partners had formed Strap and been
accepted into Cincinnati's marketing-focused accelerator The Brandery. They
made a big impression on investors during a demo day. By late last year, they'd
attracted $1.25 million in venture funding. Mr. Caldwell still can't name most
clients behind actual projects, but by August, Mondelez publicly awarded Strap
a pilot with Trident gum and the Kum & Go convenience store chain, which
expects the result to be running in the chain's app within 30 days.
"Wearable
technology is becoming the next mobile, and it's important for us as a brand to
understand how we can best leverage it," said Mindy Rickert, associate
director-shopper marketing for small-format stores at Mondelez.
The basic
premise behind Strap is "you are what you do," as opposed to
"you are what you tweet or post," said Strap co-founder and Chief
Operating Officer Patrick Henshaw. That means programs to "personalize our
world with all the things that we're doing, using human data collected
passively that's not tainted by our social atmosphere or the face we're trying to
have inside social media."
That
philosophy meant moving beyond focusing strictly on smartwatches or fitness
trackers to all the data captured by smartphones. For example, iPhones have
been tracking or calculating such things as steps, calorie burn and sleep via
HealthKit since iOs8 was launched last year, he said.
Beyond marketers giving people
rewards for meeting daily step goals, Mr. Caldwell said there's a far broader
world where biometric data could shape marketing, all using anonymized
databases and opt-in programs.
"Studies
show emails sitting there in your inbox first thing in the morning typically
get the most attention," Mr. Caldwell said. "If you know when someone
usually wakes up, you can send them a message 10 minutes before so it's the
first thing they see."
For people
logging calories, restaurants could send an offer for a 180-calorie parfait
rather than a cheeseburger to someone who's already consumed 1,800 calories
from a 2,000-calorie daily budget, Mr. Henshaw said. Or retailers who know
people are logging calories can help them calculate values for dishes made from
ingredients bought in their stores.
Since May,
Strap has operated out of the Cincinnati headquarters of Kroger Co.'s
database-marketing firm 84.51° as part of an entrepreneur-in-residence program,
where the unit's CEO Stuart Aitken has personally served as a mentor (though
Strap declines to say if Kroger is a customer.)
While
working in the shadow of Procter & Gamble Co., Strap was invited by P&G rival
Kimberly-Clark Corp. to do a demo at CES in January, and Unilever's Foundry
named Strap a finalist for a "Scale-Up of the Year" competition in
March. But likewise Strap executives declined to say if they're working on
projects for those marketers.
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