introducing healthy competition. is Nike+ bound to become a runner up?

My friend Ben Bloom has recently taken on running (seriously), and he pointed me out this site. I accused him of being a running "amateur", but soon enough I realized that I have laughed too soon (as I often tend to do). I think this is a great site. It has all awesome & necessary elements: advice, trainings, community, finding a training partner, tracking your own progress. This inevitably made me think of Nike+. I have already written at length about everything that is wrong with this site, so here is just a recap: a) Nike+ system supports only a specific type of running experience, and a person has to have that specific running experience in order to find the system personally useful ( Adam Greenfield's awesome post "on the ground running" talks about the closeness Nike+ system much better than I do);  b) This would not be an issue if Nike didn't claim that they provide super-customization (marketing talk alert!) for all runners - exactly the lack of which got a lot of serious runners not to use the site + to complain about Nike Human Race. The truth is that the more people run, the more help they need - that help being better shoes, well organized runs, and support and advice of community of runners. Which brings me back to the site above. It is all about runners' (serious or casual) actual experience. And ignoring those experiences reveals a too-well-known marketing perspective that is focused way too much on the brand and its products, and not enough on people's experience with the actual activity [in this case, running]. The brand cares less about *people-as-runners* and people's *running experience*, and more about *people-as-consumers* and *running-as-a brand-experience*. Experience seems to be the weirdly missing link in many brands' marketing thinking. It definitely is nice if a brand, like Nike, wants to help people, but then it should organize uncontroversial runs + open up their system so it is well, less about the brand, and more about runners. The problem that I have is that a lot of people in the marketing community use Nike Human Race as an "excellent" example of advertising-as-service. But if that service does not serve runners, then it is not a service anymore but a pure brand promotion. It should be questioned, not celebrated. This is the larger problem of brand images - they cover up reality way too much. This is why I think sites like DailyMile are awesome: they don't claim anything, they don't want to sell you anything, they just want to help you run better. This is a great way to build a long-lasting and loyal relationship - with a brand or otherwise.