by Hector Mackenzie
IN an undeniably brilliant piece of marketing, the Apple iTunes store has been running a freebie 12 days of Christmas campaign which comes to a close today.
It's aimed primarily at the millions of people who have just become owners of shiny new iPads and iPhones (the year's most coveted gadgets) and who are now wondering what to do with them. Forget about anything else: these were the gizmos cluttering Santa's Christmas wish lists this year. (For the record, I got neither. Not that I'm bitter: I love my new chunky knit grey cardigan.)
The online iTunes store has done brisk business in selling on specially developed applications (apps) used daily by millions of people for a truly remarkable variety of reasons. These range from daftly addictive games (Angry Gran; Talking Pierre the Parrot) to educational tools (Basic French for Dummies) to 1,001 others capable of calculating your tax, recording what you say in your sleep (I kid you not) and tracking your pregnancy.
Those already in possession of iPhones, iPads and iPods, and the growing number of smart phone users who refuse to become iClones, are downloading around a billion of the things each year, making tech developers with a nose for what's going to push the public's buttons fabulously wealthy. Giving some of the stuff away in the days which follow Christmas is a little like offering free samples of crack cocaine to gullible punters: highly addictive.
Freebies this year have ranged from free songs and videos by Coldplay and Lady Gaga to a SEGA Sonic racing game and an app to digitally manipulate your photographs. Some of them are none too shabby and cumulatively they save the savvy punter a few bob.
I've come up with a niche seasonal offering which I'm thinking of pitching to the Christmas market next year.
Born from personal experience, I believe it could be a winner in the right hands. Did you overdo things a little over the festive season? Consume a few (thousand) more 'empty' calories than you'd intended? Did you get sucked in by that sinister 'Seasonal' aisle devised by Tesco (those other marketing maestros) and consisting entirely of confectionary? You did, huh?
It was while grimly keeping a foolishly shared New Year's day pledge this week that the brainwave struck. I've mentioned the High Life Highland-promoted Move It to Lose It (MITLI) campaign more than a few times in this column over the past month or two. It was launched as a six-week pre-Christmas shape-up programme aimed at offering a helping hand to those amongst us well aware they could do with getting more active and shedding a few pounds. I think the pre-Christmas gambit was a stroke of genius, getting in before the multibillion-pound diet industry cranks into gear this month.
The good news ahead of Christmas was that the very successful Move It to Lose It programme would be continued into January. The bad news was that the season of public gorging would have to be negotiated first.
Worse, it would be without the gruelling weekly circuits classes and optional weigh-ins which offer a fighting chance of success. Nor would there be much (if any) access to gyms during the great public sector shutdown.
Back to the foolish vow. Having somehow contrived to shift 10lbs courtesy of MILTI, I pledged to myself I'd get in at least three runs during the week off work. A vague promise made in a warm office is one thing.
Getting out of bed and into the street on a dreary, dark December morning is quite another. And if that isn't bad enough, try doing it while running (okay, jogging sluggishly) past massive signs declaring 'Coffee and cake £3.50 only - Come on in! and beery revellers clutching tins of Stella Artois.
I don't know about you but my mind tends to wander here, there and everywhere while exercising. That's when the idea of some kind of a video game featuring a runner being constantly tempted by all manner of goodies during a set route began to form. There'd be some deft dodging of dog poo on the pavements, karate chopping of pie-wielding chubsters and some big pay-off for successfully staying the course.
We've had Angry Birds and Angry Gran. Is the world ready for Angry Running Man?
