Next-generation wearables: opportunities and challenges for brands

The year is 2021, and over the past six months, your wearable devices have helped you lose 20lbs without you even trying — by merely allowing your artificial intelligence (AI) powered virtual assistant to nudge your behaviour.

Does it sound far-fetched? It isn’t.

Advances in AI will mean that when you connect your health monitoring, activity tracking and spending data to a long term goal. The AI will then direct your food and drink consumption, travel/exercise and other purchases, helping you to reach that goal. It will even communicate with your favourite nearby restaurants, giving them the chance to beam an offer — directly to your smart glasses — of a precisely tailored meal for your personal dietary needs, knowing that you’ve not yet stopped for lunch.

Imagine other scenarios: the street-by-street directions displayed on your smart specs will take you a slightly longer walking route from meeting to meeting — allowing you to hit your exercise goals for the day. Recipe suggestions delivered to your smartwatch will incorporate specific measurements of ingredients to ensure meeting nutritional requirements for your calorie-controlled diet. Less-perishable foods will be bulk-bought and delivered to your smart home, helping to save you money per meal cooked.

All of this is only a few years away.

Wearables have two clear benefits: increasing the ease of doing certain things; and enhancing real life through the introduction of computer processing. What will this look like in practice?

More than the Apple Watch and more than a passing trend

From watches with touchscreens to wristband health sensors to wireless headphones and earbuds to mixed-reality smart glasses, these are all wearables. As mentioned, the purpose of wearables is twofold: to reduce friction and to enhance real-life. So, for example, remotely unlocking your garage door or control your thermostat and lightbulbs from your wrist or incorporating computing technology on the body. Gone are the days of slipping a pressure sensor in the heel of your new Nike running sneakers — the technology has advanced a long way since.

By 2023 it is predicted that one-tenth of all wearables will be unobtrusive to the user. Wearables are becoming more discreet, and consumers prefer the benefits of the technology but without the impact on the style. In the long run, a wearable will serve to streamline your daily life but also be key to achieving long term goals.

What is driving the growth in wearables?

In a time-poor culture, the appeal of wearables is obvious: our lives become more efficient when technology and automation are incorporated into our daily activities, and wearables will become the least obtrusive way to enjoy these benefits.

Additionally, with the always-present desire for improving health, wellbeing and being self-empowered, a wearable provides all the above in a single device. Coupled with the socialisation of the above and Instagram competitiveness amongst peers — it’s no surprise why the demand continues to grow.

However, the acceptance, adoption and use of wearable technology are not the same for everyone. Studies have pointed to culture, age, education, profession and wealth all being such variables. In line with this, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach a brand can adopt when exploring opportunities in the technology.

Challenges for brands

There’s an inherent intrusion of a wearable — it’s designed to be there to serve a need immediately or track something personal — and as a result, some people will never be advocates.

Consumers are increasingly conscious of the use of their data, and concerns of data hacking and social engineering through misuse of data are real. The benefits of our future AI personal assistant-bought personalised fast food meal are clear — perfect portion size for our dietary requirements and priced accordingly — but do consumers really want McDonald’s having access to that personal data? Any brands looking to use data collected through wearables must do so with full transparency.

Opportunities for brands

This month, Fitbit has just been acquired by Google for USD 2.1 billion, and By 2020, Gartner predicts a 27% increase from 2019 in consumer spending of wearables. In this context of growth, certain brands must be incorporating wearable technology into their planning.

For some brands, the technology itself can be the ‘way in’. For example, integrating connectivity into products — be they existing consumer electronics or tech, or things people already wear, i.e. fashion — or the retail experience. We know consumers desire a better customer service experience and want rewards for showing loyalty to brands, and retail experiences can be enhanced accordingly. For example, offering mixed-reality headsets to enable customers to see a virtual clothes rack tailored to their personal tastes.

However, for other brands, the tech connection isn’t as immediately evident, and rather than trying to enter the fray in the competitive hardware market it could pay dividends to focus on the potential benefits of insights developed through data collection from wearable devices.

Such data can inform product testing and innovation roadmaps. For example, Location data may demonstrate that people are more generally carrying a product while travelling by foot rather than by car. Therefore, lightness of that product is a crucial consideration (for the brand to develop future iterations). Similarly, location can help brands discover new sites for stores to meet untapped demand.

This data collection can also help the Digitisation of services — personalising services off the back of data exchange by specific customers.

A Wearable Future

So, while the envisaged AI personal assistant as a discreet wearable may not be on our Christmas lists this year, there’s no doubt the technology will continue to develop at speed in the coming 12–18 months. There is enormous value to be extracted by brands, whether through the integration of technology or the use of data collected, and it’s going to take time to find the best opportunity, so best to start now.

Max Askwith is Global Digital & Innovation Director based at Vizeum Global in London.