Brands should look at wear­ables not as a mar­ket­ing plat­form, but rather a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence plat­form. That was the con­sen­sus at ad:tech San Fran­cis­co last week, where speak­ers also said these expe­ri­ences include reward­ing moments or pro­vid­ing ser­vices.

Despite recent buzz, wear­ables are not new. Kirk Drum­mond, CEO of engage­ment agency Drum­roll, notes Nike’s Nike+ device launched in 2006, but now the Inter­net of Things is extend­ing out fur­ther and con­nect­ing more and more devices, as well as to “us and the things we wear and poten­tial­ly our bod­ies some­day,” he says.

Exam­ples of more recent wear­able tech­nol­o­gy include shoes with insoles that con­nect to maps and vibrate when approach­ing a turn, as well as the Cur smart band-aid, which uses elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion and biosen­sors to can­cel out pain.

“Do we want this exten­sion onto us? Is this some­thing that will ulti­mate­ly be a wel­come addi­tion?” Drum­mond asks. “I think the answer is about how we approach the use of wear­ables.”

In fact, per Drum­mond, the term “wear­ables” is sort of back­wards — and he even goes as far as call­ing the cat­e­go­ry a “bub­ble” because it’s “not about wear­ing tech­nol­o­gy, but tech­nol­o­gy infused in the prod­ucts we wear” and he antic­i­pates much more inte­gra­tion to come.

In addi­tion, he notes look­ing at wear­ables as a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence plat­form gives mar­keters unique oppor­tu­ni­ties for lever­age.

And even though wear­ables can help mar­keters reach con­sumers, there are lim­i­ta­tions. Like, for exam­ple, the device must ful­fill a cus­tomer need. In addi­tion, there are only so many places on a body to put a wear­able. And if con­sumers aren’t wear­ing the device it is “a use­less piece of tech­nol­o­gy,” Drum­mond says.

He even likens the oppor­tu­ni­ty for mar­keters to track cus­tomers via wear­ables to law enforce­ment track­ing indi­vid­u­als with shack­les on their ankles. But unlike shack­les, mar­keters can use wear­ables to dri­ve brand love by enhanc­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in some way.

And that includes:

1. Information.

Wear­ables can help brands pro­vide cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion that can then be used to make more informed pur­chas­ing deci­sions. Like, for exam­ple, Drum­mond notes smart insoles for run­ners can track foot impres­sions and inte­grate with sen­sors in shoes to tell con­sumers when it is time to order new shoes or if there’s a bet­ter shoe out there for them.

“The more we see brands look­ing at infus­ing tech­nol­o­gy to enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, the more [mar­keters will] get to enjoy the ben­e­fits of this,” Drum­mond says.

2. Rewards.

Anoth­er way wear­ables enhance cus­tomer expe­ri­ences is via rewards.

For its part, Kiip, which calls itself a moments-based rewards plat­form, rewards achieve­ments in apps, such as fin­ish­ing a run or com­plet­ing a recipe.

Or, as Kiip CEO Bri­an Wong puts it, Kiip offers tech­nol­o­gy for brands to reward con­sumers in a sur­prise and delight fash­ion in 3000 apps such as Mint, Run­K­eep­er and All­recipes.

In a part­ner­ship with con­nect­ed car app Mojio, for exam­ple, Wong says Kiip helps iden­ti­fy moments like run­ning out of gas, lin­ger­ing to find park­ing or need­ing an oil change to cre­ate rewards with oth­er part­ners like Exxon, BP and Shell.

Kiip has also part­nered with smart­phone breath­a­lyz­er Breath­ome­ter to reward users with Lyft or Uber cred­its if they have had too much to drink or even with gum if their breath could use fresh­en­ing, Wong says.

“We’re adding val­ue by look­ing from the cus­tomer stand­point. It’s a serendip­i­tous reward to moments that indi­cate needs,” Wong says. “A reward is one very tac­ti­cal way to address needs in a mean­ing­ful way.”

3. Services.

And, per Wong, one of the most com­pelling mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with wear­ables like Apple Watch is in pro­vid­ing con­sumers with a ser­vice.

Younger Mil­len­ni­als didn’t grow up with wrist­watch­es and so “what we think of as clas­sic sort of sen­si­tiv­i­ty to intru­sion of pri­va­cy and annoy­ance is quite dif­fer­ent with Mil­len­ni­als and younger gen­er­a­tions where we are in a noti­fi­ca­tion econ­o­my,” Wong notes. “I believe it’s a sim­ple con­cept. The noti­fi­ca­tion econ­o­my is vying for attention…I get a tap on the wrist [with Apple Watch] before I get a visu­al noti­fi­ca­tion, so who­ev­er owns that becomes quite pow­er­ful.”

And, he notes, the brand­ed apps on Apple Watch are pri­mar­i­ly around ser­vices right now, or what he calls “an ad so good it feels like a ser­vice.”

“Move­ment toward ser­vice – that’s the goal we should all be mov­ing toward,” Wong says. “I would wel­come a tap on my wrist if Unit­ed [Air­lines] was telling me my gate has changed. That’s not an ad, but ser­vice-ori­ent­ed.”

In addi­tion, he notes cus­tomers are more will­ing to share infor­ma­tion with ser­vice providers.

“You’re will­ing to tell a ser­vice more about your­self than an adver­tis­er – it changes the dynam­ic entire­ly,” Wong says.

But brands have to be invit­ed in first.

“Regard­less of whether you think of your­self as a ser­vice brand, you have to rec­og­nize it does become a real­ly impor­tant part of the mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence,” Drum­mond adds.

And while fit­ness brands are more estab­lished in this space, he sees a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty for trav­el brands in par­tic­u­lar to use wear­ables to ease some of the pain asso­ci­at­ed with fly­ing and hotel stays.

And in offer­ing ser­vices, mar­keters can iden­ti­fy moments that they can actu­al­ly own, like an aller­gy moment, a dehy­dra­tion moment or a dia­betes moment, Wong says.

“These types of moments will need to be owned…the whole point is address­ing your need,” he adds.

And, Wong says, as mar­keters make their offer­ings more about ser­vices, con­sumer pri­va­cy con­cerns start to fade.

“Add val­ue, add val­ue, add val­ue,” he says. “Every­thing you do should strive to add val­ue. Prod­ucts do that, but ads don’t. But if you can’t add val­ue through that expe­ri­ence, don’t both­er.”

In addi­tion, if the data devices col­lect enhances the con­sumer expe­ri­ence and makes users feel more like VIPs, they are more like­ly to be will­ing to share it, Drum­mond adds.

At the end of the day, Drummond’s best advice is for mar­keters to buy all avail­able wear­able devices and to start play­ing with them.

“When you research them and don’t own them, you look at them as an intru­sion,” Drum­mond says. “But when you use them, you look at it as a moment that makes sense…and you real­ly can’t iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties when you don’t own them.”

What oppor­tu­ni­ties do you see for mar­keters with wear­ables?