Apple's Fitness Challenge Prize Shows How to Ace a Remote Employee Incentive Promotion

A fitness challenge is a good way for companies to connect with their employees who might still be working remotely. It creates friendly competition among peers, promotes healthy a lifestyle and gives people an opportunity to talk about something other than their usual tasks.

It also creates a good opportunity for some branded merchandise as incentives.

Apple created a fitness challenge for employees based around the Apple Watch exercise ring design, where the user sets goals for standing time, exercise time and calories burned, with the ultimate achievement being “closing your rings.”

This year, Apple is giving the top performers of the fitness challenge a custom-printed set of towels with the Apple Watch exercise ring design, as well as a card congratulating them on their hard work. Apple employee Elad Wertheimer posted a picture on LinkedIn.

The towels are pretty nifty on their own, but like most good promotional campaigns that involve mailing products to people at home, the packaging brings the brand identity aspect up another level.

Like most things Apple does, the design is minimal, but a 2-D rendering of the closed rings perfectly represents the challenge and also serves as a nice little commercial for what an Apple Watch can do.

The custom-printed card provides a personal touch, too, which can be tough when employees aren’t in the office. When they receive that card along with the towels, it shows that their company cares about them specifically, and that the prize they earned is even more special.

Choosing towels also creates a long-term incentive to keep their exercise streak alive even after the challenge is over, since they now have good towels to clean off sweat, shower off at the gym or dry off after swimming some laps.

Apple is good at a lot of things, but branding might just be at the top of that list.