The following interview is part of our ongoing Expert Series that asks C-level professionals, team presidents, league executives, athletic directors and other sports influencers about their latest thoughts and insights on new technologies impacting the sports industry.
Name: Tim Rosa
Company: Fitbit
Position: Senior Vice President/Chief Marketing Officer
Tim Rosa is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Fitbit. He is responsible for brand and product marketing, partnerships, advertising and media, public relations and events, Fitbit.com, premium services, CRM, customer acquisition, engagement and monetization. Most recently, Rosa was Vice President of Global Brand Development at Electronic Arts, where he led branding for FIFA, Madden, Battlefield and Need for Speed, among others.
Prior to EA, he was the Vice President of Marketing at DivX, a digital video pioneer, leading the company into acquisition. He also led marketing efforts for the famed video game publisher 2K Sports and increased NBA 2K market share from 10 percent to 80 percent in five years. He attended the University of Michigan (Flint) and lives in Mill Valley, Calif. where he spends his “play time” surfing, playing ice hockey, mountain biking and trail running on Mt. Tam.
1) How are professional and college sports teams utilizing Fitbit technology to train/practice and monitor their workout regimens?
Players are utilizing Fitbit devices to track all-day activity and monitor their sleep. We’re helping them understand complex relationships like the one between sleep and athletic performance. Fitbit trackers automatically track how long and well you sleep to help you work toward a better routine. Having access to this data is especially valuable for athletes because they’re often traveling and sleeping in hotels and getting quality, consistent sleep is incredibly important for their performance.
We’re also seeing team trainers providing players with Fitbit devices before the offseason to ensure they are keeping up with their workout regimens. Our goal setting features Fitbit help provide an extra bit of motivation and accountability that can help keep athletes on track each day. We also see sports organizations like the NFL Players Union giving Fitbits to retired players. Instinctively these retired players are competitors, so they are finding the Fitbit challenges and the social aspect of our platform to be great motivational tools to help them manage their physical health in retirement.
2) If you had to invest in one technology that would change the sports + fitness landscape, what would it be and why?
I believe wearable technology as a category stands to change the sports and fitness landscape. Most of the leagues are already taking advantage of sensors in players’ uniforms to capture detailed metrics throughout practice and games. What we’re seeing now is that teams want holistic views on athletes’ health and fitness. For coaches, having access to a broader set of data is so powerful because it helps them optimize every aspect of performance; even adding just a half-inch to a player’s jumping height can mean the difference between a game winning touchdown or an interception.
Wearables are also going far beyond the benefits to the professional athletes. We’re seeing some really interesting things start to converge between virtual and physical game play at the consumer level. For the first time, consumers are being rewarded for their physical activity when they play as pro athletes in sports video games. NBA 2K was the first to integrate data in this way, and I believe we’ll see even more sports games incentivize and reward consumers for healthy behavior, reinforcing the link between activity, performance and health.
3) As a sports fan, what sports-related service, app, product, etc., could you not live without and why?
Every day I check my MLive app to get the latest news on what coach Harbaugh is up to at my alma matter, the University of Michigan. I also can’t do without my surfing apps, Surfline and Magic Seaweed, where I can see surf conditions for my favorite spots in California, which is where I live now and have been surfing for the past 20 years. I love that our most recent tracker, Flex 2, is swim-proof so I can wear it surfing to record my activity and get an even better picture of how my whole day adds up.
4) Dallas Mavericks forward Harrison Barnes is an outspoken ambassador for Fitbit and what the products have done for his NBA career. How does Fitbit select its brand ambassadors? What does Fitbit hope to gain by partnering with professional athletes?
Fitbit was one of the first brands in the wearables category to work with professional athletes and play an important role in their training. Fitbit selects its ambassadors by identifying athletes, trainers and celebrities that appeal to our broad range of consumers, at different age ranges, level of health and fitness and varying interests. Our ambassadors test our products during their development, offering suggestions and perspective.
Since each of our ambassadors specializes in something different, whether it’s professional cycling, running, playing basketball or even training celebrities, we are able to ensure that our products work for anyone who wants to improve their health and fitness.
We also have a different strategy than other large athletic brands in that we look to partner with people whose personal brand also represents the Fitbit brand. This means that despite their professional and athletic achievements they are very humble, down to earth people and relatable to a broad set of consumers. Some great examples of our brand ambassadors are elite runners Ryan and Sara Hall, former professional cyclist Jens Voigt, Ultra-Marathon legend Dean Karnazes, celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak, professional basketball player for the Dallas Mavericks Harrison Barnes, and athlete, model, mother, fitness leader Gabby Reece.
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5) If you had to project 20 years into the future, how will most athletes monitor their bodies, both during practices and in games?
It’s hard to say where we’ll be in 20 years, especially since a company like Fitbit is only 10 years old. But when we consider the future, even just in the next five years or so, we see a clear trend around providing fine-tuned guidance based on personal health data and the miniaturization of technology. Smaller biometric sensors will continue to feed more data into rolling centralized dashboards that are accessible to players, trainers and coaches. The analytics behind these dashboards will help them make adjustments and improvements in training, practice, during games and after games. There may be some resistance to this idea today, but we must remember that a whole generation of kids and future athletes will grow up with access to their biometric data thanks to companies like Fitbit. These players will want more value out of their data, so whether it’s at the high school, collegiate or pro level, the data will start playing a critical role in game-time decisions.
6) Give us your bold prediction about a form of technology that will be integral to fitness over the next 12 months and why?
Over the next 12 months, wearables will have better sensors that use less energy with smaller form factors. These improved devices will bring a richer data set along with them. Today, companies like Fitbit have done a great job tracking your data but the next evolution of wearables will be like having a personal trainer and doctor on your wrist, giving you personalized insights, coaching and guidance based on your data. I think we’re also going to see better overall health tracking and predictions about your health, so your wearable will be able to help you understand when you might be about to get sick, which will help athletes tremendously when it comes to rest, recovery and more consistent game play.