Hot Commodity

I was pretty irritated a couple days ago when I walked to the Pottruck Center (Penn’s huge gym) only to find that it was closed for “renovations”, but then I went back today and discovered that they’ve installed brand new machines on every floor! The treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, etc. are all by the same brand as they were before (Life Fitness) but now have an entire media center built in. The interesting part is that the media center caters exclusively to iPod users- basically that’s the only kind of music player you can plug in. The machines have a fairly large touch screen where users can scroll through and select songs or play lists, adjust the volume, and perform all other music functions without ever having to touch their iPods. It’s an excellent idea on behalf of Life Fitness, and fantastic for Apple as well, because if you didn’t already have an iPod at Penn, you’ll certainly want one now. The exclusivity is just another sign of how the iPod and iPod related products have truly captured the market, especially among young adults.

Touch screen technology has been around for a while now, but this just goes to show how important incremental innovation is. Something as simple as enabling students to hook their music directly to the machines makes Penn look cooler, Life Fitness seem more inventive, and enforces Apple’s brand image immensely on this campus.

Too bad I can’t use “my iPod’s battery is dead” as an excuse not to go to the gym anymore.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Company Zeroes and Heroes, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.