How does Garmin use the social web to market their GPS products?

It’s amazing to think that you can find the social web revolving around just about any activity you can think of these days.

Garmin, the creator’s of GPS navigation and communication devices have incorporated the social web into their running devices in a seemingly unexpected way by allowing their users to share activity information with others using maps and cool stats such as heart rate, timing, elevation and speed.

To someone who needs a bit of encouragement to put their running shoes on this really clinches it. The best part awaits on your return home when, still panting from that last sprint up the road, you settle down to review how well you have done by transferring the data off the device and onto the screen (via bluetooth).

The user interface Garmin have put together to convey this information is both engaging and scores high up on usability. It even allows you to embed your activity details as follows:

This is a good example of how a business focused on making GPS products thinks outside of the raw product functionality and extends its core offering into a service that not only compliments the essential functionality of the device they sell i.e. GPS tracking, but goes much further to create a purpose for it by enthusing the user for the activity for which it is made i.e. go running and be rewarded with the stats.

In business terms this is quite an achievement; essentially making a product and creating the need for it at the same time. This is not entirely new to anyone as with many socially orientated services such as Flickr, Twitter and others too numerous to list, the user is encouraged to participate and is rewarded for their participation in the form of receipt of praise in number of views and user comments. Only here it is different because the activity itself is not only not digitised, it is neither related to the use of a computer nor complimentary in any way, at least until now.

It would be interesting to explore other marketing models built around seemingly disparate connections. If you know of any please tell us.