"Watch" It!

First there was Dick Tracy, then there was James Bond taking spy photos, remote controlling his car. What was once a “make believe” wrist watch by man’s imagination becomes a reality with the debut of ‘Pulsar’ by Hamilton Watch Company in early 1982; the birth of today’s Interactive Smart Watch. Manufacturing processes have evolved from miniaturisation to 3D printing and application of nanotechnologies allow us to pack more smartphone-like functions and features in less, and provided us with new ways to look at our watch. 

Recently launched smart watches such as the Samsung Gear not only allow us to watch our time; we can watch our heartbeat, watch our messages, watch our temperature and many more “watchable” functions are made possible by myriads of sensors built into it. The watch is as good as the imagination of the programmer who wishes to include those functions as an “apps” downloader into the smart watch.

For the marketer, it opens up a completely new dimension and offer exciting possibilities to catch the wearer’s attention each time he check his “watches” or other wearable computing device for that matter. However for digital marketing in the form of a “Watch Me Now” advertising to be optimised and successful, we will have to dwell further into the consumer behaviour: Consumers follow a more or less similar pattern when it comes to buying behaviours. Typically:

1)        A need or want must arise – this is the basis of permission marketing. When there is no need or desires – any push message becomes SPAM. The last we need is to turn “Watch Me Advertising” into another SPAM media platform. OS for smart watch can have built-in function for the wearer to approve advertising sources and notifications.

2)      Search for information – once the need arises, the consumer will begin his search for information through web resources. Not enough screen assets on wrist watch to provide meaningful reads will deter consumer adoption. Brochures, PDF can only be meaningfully read on the bigger ‘phablets’ (phone cum tablet). Exclusive “watch coupons” can instead be offered when user searches the website. Rewards coupons can also be offered for returning consumers in the website.

3)      Trials – Nothing can replace the actual experience of the product try outs. However, with the sensors built in, we can know if consumers are actually excited about the product in real-time. This however presents serious question of intrusion of privacy – that we are collecting personal physiological data such as heart-rate or body temperature changes without the user knowing. Permission again is the key to branding here, we can encourage the consumer to participate in “heart ratings”.

4)         Review before purchase – Comparisons before purchase is often necessary. The watch can work with the phone to provide “review or compare” icon signposts that remember the last brand you compared. With a click on the watch – it brings you the last comparison site or even alerting on similar products nearby for quick comparisons.

Eventually making the purchase and post purchase feedback is just a flick of the watch away, through NFC with point of sales or service counters.

While many marketing tools lack feedback abilities (we can always fake a survey, but not our physical response!) and therefore making marketing research exercises painstaking, wearable computing devices such as the smart watch offer new opportunities to capture real-time quantitative data which reflects our everyday social behaviour in a mobile context. Merchants can apply proper marketing techniques at the various consumer touch points and collect important feedbacks with permissions from the consumer about their level of engagement and emotional response to marketing messages. 

The smart watch coupled with smartphone technology no doubt has propelled us towards advancing wearable computing technology and probably inched mankind towards artificial intelligence where technology eventually becomes intuitively part of us.