Whats The Big Deal About NFC? (Part 2)
IMAGE: MASHABLE COMPOSITE/MOTOROLA
Wearable Technology – the (relatively) new buzz word surrounding the tech community, no it’s not a mouth guard that doubles as chewing gum but the increasing interest in ‘smart’ gear, specifically watches.
Google has been all over this form of technology for years and now Apple’s joined the party (always fashionabley late) with their soon to be released Apple Watch. We as consumers are entering a new era of ‘smart’ with the smart watch now becoming a mainstream product. The majority of current wearables owners are young, with 48% between 18-34 years old, highlighting that this figure will only continue to grow as wearables become more useful, so.. the question is, what are marketers thinking? What are the possibilities with this tech? how can it be monetised?
Let’s take a look at a real possibility for marketers to utilise these smart capabilities in watches now, and potentially into the future:
Near Field Communication:
If you don’t know what NFC and the powers of NFC are, read my other article “Whats the Big Deal About NFC?“
This seems the most exciting and best way for marketers to use smart watch technology. with NFC slowly becoming more accessible and seamless to use, in context marketing and notifications could be the way forward to come up on your watches display. If you’re at the MCG and the half time siren goes, what would happen if a ‘tap to order’ beer display came up so that your beverage could be fast tracked and even prepaid with the NFC inbuilt.
Many limits of NFC on phones make a lot more sense when put into watch technology, keeping your phone away whilst achieving tasks that are with ease and are context specific.
BUT THERE’S JUST SOMETHING LACKING?!
There are great situations to use smart watches, but really only when you are restricted to a ‘hands free’ environment. I don’t know whether it’s the devices or the software themselves, but there doesn’t seem to be any real reasoning to go out and spend up to $500 for a digital watch that may not have a battery powerful enough to tell me the time all day. Wearables are well and truly the next step forward and are on their way to being mainstream devices, but right now, there’s no real incentive for purchase for the mainstream consumer market with it being not that difficult to take a phone out of the pocket anyway.
What are your thoughts? can you think of any other marketing possibilities for smart watches and wearables? do you agree that wearables may take a while to really pick up as a mainstream device? leave a thought below!
SP
Mr. Pixelnos 
Great post, you write really well! If my memory serves me correctly, all of the smart watches include a camera (I know that the iWatch does at least). I suppose that this could be used to easily scan QR codes and access information and promotions from brands? Whether QR codes will still be popular in the future who knows, but the option is there 🙂
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Thanks for the thought Amelia!
Yes most smart watches do include a camera but not all! (Think the original smart watch, The Pebble). I agree that QR codes are easy to scan and i like your thinking however as we have seen, QR codes don’t seem to be too popular amongst the general community, especially since it takes probably as long to open the app and scan than it does to search the net and find what the scans about!!
Maybe if they reinvented the idea of the QR cde so that it wouls be more discreet and accessible… but i guess thats what NFC is!
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I guess a smart watch could provide quick and easy way to check what notifications are on your smartphone, so you can decide whether it’s worth the time reaching into your pocket or searching around your bag to fetch your smartphone or not. It could save us at least 20 seconds per hour of our lives, which is SO valuable nowadays. 😉
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Hey there! thanks for leaving a thought! well yes, smart watches already have notifications included in their software to link with mobile devices, that seems to be the main selling point! although i just think theres so much more to be explored, with context specific notifications rather than the usual email, text and missed call ones that we could all probably do better without in my opinion. What notification in particular would you find to be most useful for a watch display?
would love to hear a response from you.
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