The holiday season is rife with retail promotions. For AliveCor, which sells its FDA-cleared KardiaMobile ECG heart monitoring devices directly to patients, this year that meant a Black Friday holiday kickoff introduced by its new celebrity spokesman.
Olympic gold medalist swimmer Mark Spitz, who has atrial fibrillation and uses KardiaMobile to monitor his heart, first teamed with AliveCor in September. Spitz, 69, set an Olympic gold medal record in 1972, winning seven at the summer Olympics in Munich. He was diagnosed with afib not long before he joined AliveCor and wanted to use the partnership to tell his story, Ira Bahr, chief operating officer at AliveCor, said.
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“Mark Spitz is not just one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, but he’s also an icon for a generation. If you look at the age cohort that are beginning to develop the heart arrhythmia that KardiaMobile is very effective in detecting, you see that Mark fits right squarely in the middle of that. It’s largely the baby boomer generation who are in their 60s and 70s now, which is the age where people disproportionately start to develop heart arrhythmias,” Bahr said.
The holiday promotion to offer KardiaMobile at a discounted price of $84, down from $99, is the first time AliveCor has dropped the device price and comes as the company’s new 6L six-lead $149 ECG monitor arrives to market. Both devices are FDA cleared to detect afib as well as bradycardia and tachycardia arrhythmias.
The Black Friday-specific promotional commercial with Spitz features his Olympic story and road to afib and also notes the price cut as well as availability on Amazon and at CVS stores. Last year, AliveCor offered a free carrying case as its holiday promotion.
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“We’re a consumer electronics product, and like with any consumer electronics product, we see a disproportionate number of sales during the holiday season,” Bahr said, noting that it’s not uncommon for family and friends to buy the device for loved ones who have a heart condition.