All that data coming from wearables like fitness trackers and
smartwatches now has a place to go and, more precisely, it has a way to get there.
A Mondelez International brand is partnering with Strap, an IoT-focused startup, to leverage wearable data
for brand marketing.
I’ve been tracking the Cincinnati startup for some time and now it has teamed with a major brand to take it into the marketplace.
Strap is partnering with
Trident, of gum fame, and Kum & Go, the convenience store chain with more than 400 stores, to tap into the human data intelligence that wearables can provide.
Strap is one of the startup
companies that Mondelez just announced is one of the winners of its Shopper Futures program, which links Mondelez brands with entrepreneurs to jointly and rapidly develop and launch an innovation
aimed at transforming the consumer retail experience.
Strap, Trident and Kum & Go will work together for 90 days to collectively devise how they will deploy and use the wearable data
tracking technology.
“We don’t yet know the exact use case,” Steve Caldwell, CEO of Strap, told me yesterday.
Strap created a technology platform that captures and
analyzes data from wearable devices, like fitness trackers, smartwatches and naturally, smartphones. The company takes a white labeling approach, including its technology inside a brand’s
app.
For example, when a customer opens an app, like from Trident, a message could be displayed asking the person if they want to connect their personal device to the app.
If a person
has a device such as a fitness tracker from Fitbit or an Apple Watch, they could select to authorize that their device data be shared with the brand.
“There’s a single opt-in
point,” said Caldwell. “Loyalty and ID data can be linked. We give them data science that supports their mission; we provide human data intelligence.”
Only the brand
using Strap gets to see that consumer data from its customers and can integrate it with their own customer data to craft relevant offers.
Data is collected across four major categories:
movement, sleep, body metrics (like height and weight) and food, as consumers log what they eat.
The venture will start with a 90-day immersion period where teams from all entities work
together to device a market approach. That would be followed by a pilot, likely early next year.
I’ve seen some of the early data from Strap, with some early customers before the
Mondelez deal. The data dashboard can show some interesting overall stats for a particular customer set. These include the average number of steps taken, the calories burned, how many floors climbed
along with active and non-active minutes.
As anyone wearing a fitness tracker knows, these are typical stats a consumer sees from their fitness tracker app.
What Strap essentially is
doing is providing an aggregate view of human body activity of a particular customer set and allowing a brand or retailer to combine that with what else they know about their customers.
From
there, IoT marketing begins in seriousness.