AllSport GPS

AllSport GPS is part of the family of outdoor and fitness GPS mobile apps by Trimble Outdoors, a Trimble business. AllSport GPS makes it incredibly easy and fun to track workouts using the most popular smartphones including iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. Users literally just hit start on the app, then sweat and stop. The premium app collects more than 20 fitness stats and calculates calories burned to help people reach their fitness goals. In addition, consumers can navigate their routes, see real-time weather forecasts, chart their workouts over time, and view premium maps. 

Trimble Outdoors develops GPS-enabled mobile apps and map solutions for fitness and outdoor enthusiasts. Its popular apps—Trimble Outdoors™, AllSport GPS™, Geocache Navigator™, Cabela's Recon™ Hunt, and Backpacker GPS Trails—run on more than 300 mobile devices worldwide and help consumers navigate on trails and off-road, track fitness workouts, find caches and more. Trimble Outdoors is also a leading provider of print and digital maps for hikers, hunters, and campers via the MyTopo brand. By leveraging Trimble's 30 years of commercial expertise in GPS, software, and communications, Trimble Outdoors delivers cost-effective and convenient position-based services that promote consumers' well-being, security and active lifestyles.

The Challenge

The health and fitness mobile app space is extremely crowded, and differentiating is becoming increasing challenging as users now have endless options. Trimble Outdoors needed a way to set AllSport apart from the rest. It is important not only for Trimble Outdoors to increase downloads, but also build a loyal and engaged customer base that will make AllSport GPS a critical part of reaching their health and fitness goals. This meant that engaging customers had to go beyond selling the features and get them to connect emotionally with the app. 

“The fitness application market grows every week. We had to find a way to personalize the AllSport brand in a way that competitors just weren’t doing. We wanted to try something that was genuine and grassroots.” – Kris Wagner, marketing director for Trimble Outdoors.

The key end user for AllSport GPS isn’t the person who wants to achieve personal best at a marathon or reach and maintain a specific heart rate for perfect metabolic training. This app was designed for the rest of us. The person who wants to lose 10 pounds, run a 10K and finish, or just capture their weekend hikes and share them on Facebook with friends. AllSport is designed to help the everyday person who loves outdoor fitness reach their goals and make exercise more fun. And the company needed real people to exemplify this and build a personal connection to the app.

The Solution

Ubiquity PR worked with Trimble Outdoors to create an Ambassador Program. This program would involve finding every day people doing extraordinary things to improve their health through outdoor fitness. First, Ubiquity outlined what characteristics each ambassador would have: amateur athlete who has achieved a substantial goal through fitness such as extreme weight loss or overcoming a physical obstacle. Then we made recommendations for what the idea ambassador program would look like. It would be heavily social, with grassroots promotion through both AllSport GPS and the ambassador’s social media channels, combined with utilizing the ambassador for media relations.

Next, Ubiquity found AllSport’s first ambassador: Ben Davis. Ben had posted this video to YouTube chronicling his 120-pound weight loss journey through running. He also had a blog with over 50,000 unique visitors a month and growing, as well as an active Facebook fan base, which currently has over 8,000 fans. His YouTube video had over one million views at the time Ubiquity found it in October 2010, today it has 1.4 million. 

We reached out to Ben to see if he’d be interested in a sponsorship to be an AllSport Ambassador and he agreed it was a great fit. 

“We really felt that a strong story about a product would engage customers more than traditional advertising or marketing. If you can tie an inspirational story around your product it will create engagement. Ben has an amazing story. He’s created a community and he’s inspired people to lose weight. We felt AllSport was a perfect compliment for that,” said Wagner. 

At the beginning of 2011, while Trimble Outdoors and Ben Davis were in the early stages of discussing the sponsorship, Ben planned a summer 5K tour. He, along with his father and brother, would do 5K runs in 31 cities and asked fans and followers of his journey to join them. It was the definition of grassroots and Ben Davis fans all over the country were excited to participate. Ben had started what is now called the “Do Life” movement and this tour was his kick off. AllSport GPS was to be a sponsor of the tour in exchange for Ben becoming the first AllSport Ambassador. Throughout his Ambassadorship, Ben promoted the AllSport GPS brand in several different ways to his Do Life community:

• Blog posts about using the app to track his workouts that were posted to the Do Life blog, the linked to from his Do Life and personal Facebook pages
• Contributed posts to the AllSport GPS blog
• Use of the app and posting his workouts to his Facebook Page
• AllSport GPS logo on the Do Life blog
• A personal thanks to Trimble Outdoors and AllSport at every 5K event
• Giveaways of the app and AllSport GPS branded shwag to his community
• Live video Q&A sponsored by AllSport

“It’s hard to find a good fit and Ubiquity helped us find Ben first and foremost. Then they helped us create a program that reached out to Ben’s community and help support his Do Life 5K tour. Ubiquity was especially helpful in helping us manage the partnership with Ben and offering suggestions as to make this a better relationship long term,” said Wagner. 

Trimble Outdoors really wanted to make Ben’s first Do Life 5K tour look like a big event. Ubiquity conducted media outreach in every city the tour visited and were able to get local press to cover the 5K runs. Specifically, Ubiquity had two stories to pitch to press – the before story, to get them to come to the runs and talk to participants. And then after to get them showcase the tour and the many people from all over the country who were coming out to share their own stories of weight loss. The local angle was important because it got people out to the event and also showed something really cool in each of these communities. Also, bringing awareness to the epidemic of obesity in the US was a goal of Ben’s and also for Trimble Outdoors. 

Ubiquity PR was able to secure 32 local media placements in cities such as Boston, Charlotte, Atlanta, Cinncinatti and Phoenix as well as 18 calendar event listings. Here are some of the media placements:

FOX Atlanta – “The Do Life Movement Stops in Atlanta”

NBC Kansas City – “Do Life' tour hits Kansas City helping inspire life changes”

Washington Times – “Allsport GPS Sponsors Ben Davis ‘Do Life 5K Tour’ ”

Georgetown Patch – “Do Life 5K Tour Stops In D.C.”

Lincoln Journal Star – “The biggest winner: Man shares journey of losing more than 120 pounds” 

Portland Tribune – “Do Life Movement!”

East Valley Tribune – “One man's battle with obesity turns into national movement”

Trimble Outdoors also reported that traffic to the AllSport GPS blog increased noticeably on the days that Ben contributed posts and that traffic came to the AllSport GPS site from the Do Life Facebook page.

“The local PR really did help our marketing. We’re no longer just talking about a product and what it can do. We’re actually showing what it can do. This app is about helping people live healthier, more active lives. And the Ben Davis story shows the value of the app in action. Now it’s not just another fitness app that lives in an app store. It has a story wrapped around it. That’s important when you have a hyper competitive market place. Something like this really helps us rise above that.”

Since the Do Life Tour ended, Trimble Outdoors has decided to continue and grow the Ambassador program, with a  goal of identifying and engaging more people like Ben with amazing stories. They are also considering engaging outdoor explorers for some other Trimble Outdoors products as well.  

“The hard part is to find the perfect person with the right charisma with the right personality to engage a large audience. Ben was perfect for our brand. This first ambassadorship broke new ground for us.”