This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, Quorso, and Veloq, looks at how Dick’s Sporting Goods unexpectedly surged up the Apple App Store rankings.
Chris Walton and Jenn Hahn break down how the retailer’s Move fitness rewards app is driving engagement and why gamifying fitness could be a powerful retail loyalty strategy.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcripts
Speaker A:
Dick's Sporting Goods unexpectedly crashed the top of the Apple App Store's free download chart last weekend, landing at number three, right between Anthropic's cloud and Google's Gemini.
Speaker A:
And the reason has almost nothing to do with shopping.
Speaker A:
According to Inc.
Speaker A:
The catalyst was Anthropic's refusal to allow unrestricted government use of its AI for surveillance and autonomous weapons, which drove a surge of Claude downloads, inadvertently pulling the Dick's app into the spotlight right alongside it.
Speaker A:
The Dick's App feature behind the buzz is called Move.
Speaker A:
It lets users sync a fitness Tracker and earn three scorecard points for every day they hit 10,000 steps, walk three miles, or complete 30 minutes of physical activity.
Speaker A:
Social media lit up with posts from people who hadn't thought about Dicks in years and suddenly downloaded the app specifically to get paid for going for a walk, an incentive described as roughly the equivalent of 10 cents a day.
Speaker A:
Whoa, Jen, what stands out to you, if anything, about Dick's mobile app suddenly rocking, rocketing up the charts?
Speaker B:
Well, I will say I am going to download the app because I'm going for those watches anyways.
Speaker B:
I'm taking my 10 cents, so it's working for me just hearing about it now.
Speaker B:
So if I understand it correctly, Claude's team posted a screenshot of the top downloaded apps and they were all AI driven, but somehow Dick's Sporting Goods was in the mix.
Speaker B:
Am I correct?
Speaker A:
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker A:
That part's a little unclear and fuzzy to me too.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
Okay, so the comment section took off as one does, and then it caused even more buzz around why it's being downloaded and the features that people love, et cetera.
Speaker B:
And people went to download even more, as I will do after we finish the recording for this show.
Speaker B:
So what happens here in my mind is this is really just about consumer behavior, right?
Speaker B:
Curiosity creeps in from the masses.
Speaker B:
Everyone wants to know, why is a sporting goods store in the top Downloads with all LLMs outside of that, right?
Speaker B:
Everyone wants to be part of what's trending and then, voila, even more downloads.
Speaker B:
So the cool thing to me about this headline is it sounds like the quiet, sort of unsexy work that's being done behind the scenes at Dick's to enhance their app drive.
Speaker B:
Their downloads, happen to meet one of those magical opportunity moments of a viral post, and then bam, they're even more popular.
Speaker B:
They were already in the top five.
Speaker B:
And we'll see what happens when we all start being paid for our walks.
Speaker B:
So, yeah, I like it.
Speaker B:
I think it's a fun story.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
10 cents a day, man.
Speaker A:
I'm all, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a frugal guy, Jen.
Speaker A:
I'm all about getting $36 a year for recording my fitness activities.
Speaker A:
Sure, why not?
Speaker A:
You know, of course, that assumes I'm doing it every day, which is a high, which is a not very likely thing to happen in my life.
Speaker A:
But.
Speaker A:
But yeah, the other thing that stands out for me too, Jen, is the data.
Speaker A:
You know, this is a great data play for Dick's Sporting Goods, particularly for, like we talked about, we talked about two headlines ago, retail media.
Speaker A:
You know, adding this kind of data from consumers gives Dick's even more data to refine their advertisements in what is quickly becoming, as you described it very well, the most important additional revenue stream for traditional bricks and mortar retailers to capitalize on.
Speaker A:
And, and so that's the real crux of what's going on here, is the data play.
Speaker A:
And getting people like yourselves, like me, to now be interested in the Dick's app and downloading it and potentially correlating it to our workout data is very, very valuable in the long run.
