*supercollider

In a fulfillment of famed game designer Shigeru Miyamoto’s plans from this time last year, Nintendo last week announced the Wii “Check-Up” channel. Launching in April, this partnership with a health insurer and partners NEC, Hitachi and Panasonic will allow Wii Fit users in Japan to send their health data to physicians for remote checkups.

It’s a brilliant extension of an existing product, taking the data already being generated from the Wii Fit balance board and extending the both usefulness and value of the product to the user.

There is now a growing collection of high-profile examples of physical products that generate data, and use that data in innovative ways to provide extra value to its owner.

Nike+

For the benefit of anyone living under a rock for the last two years, Nike+ is a technology solution that features a sensor embedded in Nike running shoes which collects data about a runner’s performance, including distance and pace.

The data is sent to a receiving device, such as an iPod, Amp+ watch, or Sportband, and instant feedback is relayed back to the user visually or via voice prompts.

The second part of the service kicks in when the run is over and the data is transferred via iTunes to Nikeplus.com. At Nikeplus.com your run data is used to provide a range of services to runners, including performance graphing, run tracking, goal setting, and community challenges.

Fiat ecoDrive

Fiat cars featuring the new ecoDrive technology collect data about your driving habits, which can by transferred by USB to your PC.

An application then analyzes your driving technique and gives you an ecoIndex score, as well as pointing out specific areas for improvement and tutorials to help you improve. Challenges and community features extend the experience even further.

This product was developed in partnership with Microsoft and my colleagues here at AKQA London.

Wattson

DIY Kyoto’s Wattson collects data about electricity usage throughout your house, and gives you instant feedback on your spend as well as long-term graphing.

Like Nike+ and ecoDrive, community features are expected in the future, allowing people to compare their consumption and swap tips.

Sniftag

Sniftag is an RFID-enabled accelerometer, which uniquely identifies your pet, tracks his activity, and broadcasts his presence to other SNIF Tag enabled dogs. Community features let dog-owners put names to the faces in the park. It’s Nike+ for dogs.

Botanicalls

Take a moisture-sensor, an RFID chip, and a network connection and what do you get?

Botanicalls, self-monitoring plants that give you a call or sent you a tweet on Twitter when they need a drink.

What’s next?

The next few years are going to see the release of a slew of products that generate data about themselves and their users, and through that data new services will be created that unlock a whole range of additional value around the product, creating significant competitive advantage for the companies that do it first, and do it right.

I was content to think this was a good thing, but Russell Davies’s thought-provoking probing of this new space on his “meet the new schtick” post questions whether it might be a potential threat to agencies:

The point I’m groping towards is that as objects informationalise communication channels are getting built in. And there are ways of doing this that are mass, cheap and easy. Printing. Paper. Ink. RFID. And cleverer phones will be the perfect things to interact with these clever objects. This is what advertising and marketing and media people really need to get afeared by. All this web stuff is going to look like a picnic compared to the horrors that will be dealt to the agency and media businesses when every product has a communications channel built right in. And I suspect it’s a channel that most brand-owners will feel a lot more comfortable with. Marketing/advertising was always a necessary evil for most businesses. And Something bolted onto the culture. And they’ve never liked ITV. And having to do all this social networking stuff gives most of them the willies. But integrating communication and information into the product is something they can get behind quickly and easily.

Russell’s as digitally savvy as they come, so this isn’t protectionism talking. But still, I can’t help but think whether you’d classify this as an opportunity or risk depends on what you think the role of an agency should be. If your limit your definition of a marketing agency’s scope to advertising, then yeah, you’re bricking yourself right now.

However it already seems like as an industry, marketing agencies are starting to shift to focusing less on building awareness, and focusing more on building value. We’re experimenting with creating products, creating different forms of entertainment, brand experiences, creating culture around products, creating communities around brands, connecting brands and their consumers and doing all sort of fun things. For me, all this is way, way more exciting than making a TV ad. And we’re just getting started.

These digitally enabled products are producing lots of data, that now lets us (brands and agencies) do lots of interesting things with that data. That data powers communities and services that never existed before, and that are blurring the definitions of marketing and transforming categories.

I suppose the idea that products have communication channels is a risk for media owners, but I don’t think for agencies. Modern businesses are built on the idea that you focus on your core competencies, and leave the rest to specialists. I’d argue that the fragmentation and exploding possibilities in marketing actually make it harder to try and pull it all in-house, not easier. Your competitors could choose from a whole range of nimble boutiques and powerhouse specialists that are pushing the edges of what’s possible with data, networks and culture and eat your business alive. Especially when those companies are not just producing messaging, but adding huge swathes of value around your competitors product range.

Yes, some ATL agencies that can’t pull a Goodby, Silverstein and retool to become great in the post-ad era are going to die. But that was going to happen anyway, and is simply just an evolution rather than a death. Something new is being born from those ashes.

We need to accept and in fact embrace a different role for the agency. We’re not about making ads. We’re about co-creating culture around brands and products. And enhancing the value of those brands and products to the people that own them. And there’s a billion different ways to do that.

I think where it’s going to get really messy is in the past you had brand managers and CMOs working with agency peeps. It was a pretty clear alignment. Digital has already made things messier, as in many organizations you now have IT with a seat at the table as well. Now you are going to have the product division, the community and customer advocacy team (owning blogs, some social media, and a large part of CRM 2.0), as well as the product marketing team and IT all needing to work together and with agencies. And agencies are going to have to be involved much more deeply at the beginning of product conception all the way through realization for their full value to be realized. And that’s possibly the next massive change to come, and has huge implications.