In this episode, we spoke to Robin Thurston, the CEO of Pocket Outdoor Media, the world’s leading creator of active lifestyle content reaching 15M+ consumers every month. Robin was formerly the Chief Digital Officer at Under Armour, after having found and sold his startup MapMyFitness in 2013. Robin spoke about the recent acquisition of magazine titles from Active Interest Media, his vision for the company, why lifetime customer value is so important, and his thoughts on the future of fitness technology. Be sure to check out Pocket Outdoor Media’s podcast and publications.
Podcast Highlights
Pocket Outdoor Media’s platform: “We started building a platform, essentially that personalizes content and really focuses ultimately on a recommendation engine for how to get people to participate in these activities more.”
Active Pass gives access to everything: “What does not exist in the marketplace, even if you look at Peloton or others, is what I really would call the Netflix or the Amazon prime of the candidate. You as a consumer for one price, you’re getting access to the entire platform.”
MapMyFitness app data: “We generated this map from I think it was 2015 of all the start locations of every workout that people had logged in the world.”
Military telling MapMyFitness to turn off tracking: “We had at one point the military call us because they wanted us to turn off access at military bases because we had so much data people running around military bases.”
Fitness tech is still in the 2nd inning: “A lot of people ask me what inning do you think we’re in here in the fitness tech space and my view is like, we’re still like in the second inning.”
The abundance of data that hasn’t been used: “There’s so much with this data that just has not been touched yet, but there will be services and products and things that basically come out of this that are in my view world-changing for the fitness and sort of active lifestyle space.”
Data science for user experience: “I think a lot of companies are in danger of is basically saying we’re going to hire a bunch of data scientists to create a product that we think is right. And not necessarily something that actually benefits the user.”
Creating a definitive home for Active Lifestyle: “My view is through hyper-personalization and curation the ultimate experience for the consumer, whether it’s around gear, nutrition, training, you know, any of these verticals. I think my vision of where and what we’ll be able to create something that essentially brings all those things together and really understands the customer better than anyone else.”
