Fine, I give in--thoughts on the Sprint Widget

I first heard about the Sprint widget a few days ago at about 2am from a Google alert (I'm a Goodby Silverstein and Partners fan and I have a GSP alert--no teasing please) and was excited to find a little late night entertainment. I regret to say, however, that my initial response wasn't much more than a shoulder shrug and I deleted the email. 

But since those early morning hours, I can't seem to stop finding people talking about it, so I'm breaking and joining the discussion.

In favor of the work, I think Mike Kellogg did a beautiful job and certainly made each tiny space a part of the experience, which ended up keeping me playing with the widget much longer than I would have expected to have done. And in favor of the strategy, it directly relates this idea of "now" to measurable and entertaining bits of information, even if they aren't actually accurate or are based on annual (or longer) averages instead of actual up-to-"now" updates.

But my frustration with the piece is that they were so close to bring their strategy to life, and yet they missed the opportunity.  As you all probably know by now, I'm a big fan of adding value to the consumers. Tweeting back and forth with Paul Isakson, we discussed how the widget was alright but would have been significantly cooler if the features were more useful, which brings us to the big missed opportunity: If it had more useful features that were up-to-the-minute, people would be more apt to want the product for on-the-go internet. This would take the idea of "This is Now" and make it much more relevant to the consumer and the product, supporting a much more direct path to sales. 

Some may argue that they didn't have to make it about the product, that reflecting the idea of instant needs and instant knowledge is enough to support the "This is Now" campaign, which in turn would drive the sales, but I think that both the sales and the widget experience would improve with more useful features on the widget. Besides, just using that insight can open you up to getting lost in the category; there are a number of tech products that could have been promoted using this widget, so Sprint should make sure they get the most out of this extensive project and do what they can to hit it outta the park.