By now, we all know how to map our runs and monitor the distance we’ve gone. Which is great. But what if you’re a swimmer?
Speedo, in partnership with agency Hello Design, yesterday unveiled “Speedo Fit,” designed to help swimmers of all levels set, reach and track their goals.
Built from the insights gathered from Speedo’s earlier digital experiments in the form of a community called Pace Club — which was aimed at performance swimmers and country-specific apps in the U.K., France and China over three years — the new app is more inclusive, global and sleek.
Speedo Fit aims to reach out to all levels of swimmers, inviting users to not only log their swims but also to find local pools around them and save their favorites. They can track their progress in terms of duration, number of sets and even step up to challenges and set distance and map goals for themselves. The hope is that the brand’s nearly 355,000 Facebook followers and over 32,000 followers on Twitter will now find a collective space on the app.
“We saw a trend in people asking more questions, and we realized we weren’t giving them everything they needed,” Alyssa Igawa, Speedo USA’s director of marketing, said. “We’ve learned so much as a brand and wanted to give fitness swimmers the tools they need to get more out of their swims.”
The app comes with several features, such as the “Map Goals” feature, which lets users visualize the actual distance they have been swimming in the pool by “virtually” swimming some of the world’s most exotic swim destinations, for instance, with an “Amazon Adventure” and “Bali Escape.” There are “Distance Goals” as well, that keep users motivated by tracking their improvement.
Speedo Fit will also have a strong social element and is designed to also cater to those who wish to engage with the community by challenging other swimmers, like and comment on each others’ swim logs, compare stats and exercise their competitive streaks. It has an associated content hub, which not only showcases the app’s features, technique videos and curated gear, but will also evolve into a content hub for fitness swimmers and be updated with new content and features in several stages, including new workouts and more expert advice from the likes of Olympic medalists Summer Sanders, Natalie Coughlin and Ryan Lochte among others.
David Lai, CEO at Hello Design, said that creating a better experience and integrating the community aspect was key.
“The flexibility allows casual and serious swimmers to be able to customize the app experience they want,” he said.”We designed the interface so it’s always easy to engage with the swimming community.”
“If we can engage people on the app,” said Igawa, “they automatically get involved with us as a brand.”
The launch will be promoted throughout the brand’s social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus and Pinterest, and the hashtags #speedofit, #summerstips and #speedogear will be employed.
Image courtesy of Speedo
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