With the long-await­ed release of Apple Watch, all eyes are on wear­ables. It’s a nascent indus­try, to be sure, but an already com­pet­i­tive space with addi­tion­al offer­ings from play­ers like Android, Fit­bit, Jaw­bone, and Peb­ble. So which device has the most stay­ing pow­er? Is it real­ly Apple Watch? And which offers the most oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters? We asked 20 adver­tis­ing and tech­nol­o­gy experts for their insight.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, many experts think Apple will emerge vic­to­ri­ous here, too, hand­i­ly squash­ing health track­ers thanks in part to its addi­tion­al func­tion­al­i­ty and wide­spread reach. Oth­ers say the jury is still out and point to fea­tures like bat­tery life as the ulti­mate bat­tle­ground that will deter­mine the win­ner. Still oth­ers dis­count devices com­plete­ly, look­ing toward tech­nol­o­gy like Microsoft’s holo­graph­ic com­put­ing plat­form

Oth­ers say the jury is still out and point to fea­tures like bat­tery life as the ulti­mate bat­tle­ground that will deter­mine the win­ner. Still oth­ers dis­count devices com­plete­ly, look­ing toward tech­nol­o­gy like Microsoft’s holo­graph­ic com­put­ing plat­form

Still oth­ers dis­count devices com­plete­ly, look­ing toward tech­nol­o­gy like Microsoft’s holo­graph­ic com­put­ing plat­form HoloLens, as well as sen­sors that are embed­ded direct­ly into cloth­ing or even wear­ables that inte­grate direct­ly with con­sumers’ actu­al sens­es – think: sight, touch, smell, etc. – as the tru­ly bold fron­tier for “wear­ables.”

But they nev­er­the­less agree the devices that suc­ceed will be those that blend seam­less­ly with con­sumers’ every­day lives. And even though wear­ables offer many dif­fer­ent poten­tial val­ue propo­si­tions and can at times make for apples/oranges com­par­isons, they say mar­keters will gen­er­al­ly be suc­cess­ful so long as they design apps and fea­tures with spe­cif­ic con­sumers and pain points in mind.

Here are their takes on which wear­ables will reign supreme – and where brands and mar­keters can reap the most ben­e­fits.

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Tom Eslinger, Worldwide Director of Digital and Social, Saatchi & Saatchi

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power?

At present, wear­ables which col­lect the most rel­e­vant data that the largest group of cus­tomers want will get the most trac­tion. We also can’t under­es­ti­mate style and brand names – not just the devices but also the stuff on them. And the widest pos­si­ble abil­i­ty to share what’s on and col­lect­ed by the wear­able to the largest num­ber of oth­er devices and ser­vices. That said, I’m claw­ing at my mail­box every day wait­ing for my Apple Watch.

Why?

It’s dif­fi­cult to get new tech­nol­o­gy to break through to large cus­tomer bases as it is, let alone tech that peo­ple aren’t entire­ly clear on its imme­di­ate ben­e­fit. Smart­phone: easy, because cus­tomers think “com­put­er and phone in one thing.” Wear­able: hard­er, because it’s anoth­er thing to look after, charge up, update, con­nect with my stuff, let alone what the heck do I need it for when I have a smart­phone that does lots of the same stuff?

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers?

Wear­ables that con­nect deeply with cus­tomers will be the best oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands and mar­keters – they will be the eas­i­est ones to draw con­nec­tions to brands and make addi­tion­al mean­ing­ful con­tent and be use­ful to cus­tomers. For exam­ple, brands that can turn data col­lect­ed by a wear­able into a mean­ing­ful, use­ful “thing” that a cus­tomer can use will make faster con­nec­tions, like turn­ing activ­i­ty data into a sto­ry about health insur­ance and how it can be high­ly per­son­al­ized.

Why?

Peo­ple don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to learn new habits and behav­iors when they con­nect new “stuff” to their lives; build­ing onto exist­ing behav­iors (like track­ing my steps and calo­rie burn) to some­thing that I need more per­son­al­ized infor­ma­tion for (like select­ing which health insur­ance plan to choose) with­out me hav­ing to alter any of my exist­ing behav­iors pro­vides util­i­ty and a lev­el of under­stand­ing of what’s impor­tant to me.

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Dan Hou, Vice President of Product Strategy at Huge

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

There’s no killer app yet for the Apple Watch, so the jury is still out. And it’s clear that at this moment in time, it’s not a must-have device. That said, I expect the Apple Watch to have the most stay­ing pow­er out of any wear­able. It’ll like­ly eat a por­tion of the mar­ket that already wears some health mon­i­tor­ing device — the Jaw­bones and Fit­bits of the world. From that per­spec­tive, it’s easy to think of the Watch as a val­ue play, rather than a pre­mi­um prod­uct, because even though it’s more expen­sive, the build qual­i­ty far sur­pass­es oth­er health track­ers, and it adds a ton more func­tion­al­i­ty. And of course, if any­one had the mar­ket­ing cloud to dri­ve wide­spread mar­ket adop­tion, it would be Apple.

From that per­spec­tive, it’s easy to think of the Watch as a val­ue play, rather than a pre­mi­um prod­uct, because even though it’s more expen­sive, the build qual­i­ty far sur­pass­es oth­er health track­ers, and it adds a ton more func­tion­al­i­ty. And of course, if any­one had the mar­ket­ing cloud to dri­ve wide­spread mar­ket adop­tion, it would be Apple.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

Again, Apple Watch eas­i­ly comes out on top. But not for any rea­sons hav­ing to do with the watch itself. It’s all about the ecosys­tem that Apple has built around its phys­i­cal prod­ucts. First and fore­most is the built-in pay­ment mech­a­nism with the 800M+ cred­it cards that are already work­ing hard for mar­keters with a sin­gle wave of a user’s hand. Now this pay­ment mech­a­nism works seam­less­ly through Apple Pay in 700,000 stores through­out the coun­try. Tons of brands and retail­ers are think­ing hard about cus­tomer engage­ment through var­i­ous apps strate­gies, and this adds anoth­er major weapon to their arse­nal. Final­ly, if the Apple Watch becomes main­stream, it’ll open up mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties around cus­tomer data. SoLo­Mo was a big deal, but imag­ine cou­pling real-time health ana­lyt­ics with it?

Tons of brands and retail­ers are think­ing hard about cus­tomer engage­ment through var­i­ous apps strate­gies, and this adds anoth­er major weapon to their arse­nal. Final­ly, if the Apple Watch becomes main­stream, it’ll open up mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties around cus­tomer data. SoLo­Mo was a big deal, but imag­ine cou­pling real-time health ana­lyt­ics with it?

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Allie Walker, Strategist and Editor of the trend-spotting division FutureVision at R/GA

Which device has the most staying power? Why?

I think what we’re see­ing is the idea that any­thing can be a wear­able – your shirt, shoes, belt, ear­rings and even eye­lash­es are all becom­ing smart and serv­ing a dif­fer­ent pur­pose. Apple Watch’s val­ue propo­si­tion is glance­able noti­fi­ca­tion so you are more con­nect­ed in the moment, but…Google is work­ing on a smart con­tact lens that can check glu­cose lev­els through mois­ture in the eyes so you don’t have to prick your­self with a nee­dle and it’s much less intru­sive. That’s a dif­fer­ent val­ue propo­si­tion and the def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess changes with who is your brand and what prob­lem are you try­ing to solve and how can you pro­vide greater util­i­ty? The eye­lash­es are…very exper­i­men­tal. [They are] fake eye­lash­es that inter­act with con­duc­tive eye­lin­er and it was used for an art project – it’s not going main­stream at any moment – so that when [the artist] blinked, she con­trolled a drone, but you can see the idea of some­one who can’t speak or doesn’t have con­trol of their hands, this eye­lash con­trol could be the new ges­ture. There are so

The eye­lash­es are…very exper­i­men­tal. [They are] fake eye­lash­es that inter­act with con­duc­tive eye­lin­er and it was used for an art project – it’s not going main­stream at any moment – so that when [the artist] blinked, she con­trolled a drone, but you can see the idea of some­one who can’t speak or doesn’t have con­trol of their hands, this eye­lash con­trol could be the new ges­ture. There are so many more oppor­tu­ni­ties beyond just the wrist and fitness…[there are] socks for babies [from a brand called] Owlet that track heart rate and breath­ing and can solve for SIDS, which is so dif­fer­ent than track­ing a marathon pace. It’s solv­ing those dis­tinct issues. [There’s also] a sports bra that can detect breast can­cer or a wear­able from the Michael J. Fox Foun­da­tion that can track Parkinson’s dis­ease and fig­ure out triggers…and con­cus­sion caps that track the impact to see when you come off on the side­lines and the coach is decid­ing whether to send you back in, how bad­ly you were actu­al­ly hit. I’m real­ly excit­ed about these wear­ables that are solv­ing these prob­lems and mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy invis­i­ble in a sense and get­ting tech­nol­o­gy clos­er to our bod­ies more and more and more, but it’s not look­ing more and more, it’s look­ing like less and less. A less intru­sive way for con­sumers to adjust to a prob­lem. That’s what’s excit­ing. To bring it back a bit more main­stream with Apple Watch, Peb­ble, and Fit­bit, it’s inter­est­ing to see the fash­ion indus­try start­ing to go with it, con­sid­er­ing how women use devices dif­fer­ent­ly than men, so they put more into the design aes­thet­ic. Like there’s a ring or a bracelet you can touch if you’re feel­ing unsafe and it will send a mes­sage with your loca­tion and that you might be in trou­ble. That’s an inter­est­ing angle as well.

To bring it back a bit more main­stream with Apple Watch, Peb­ble, and Fit­bit, it’s inter­est­ing to see the fash­ion indus­try start­ing to go with it, con­sid­er­ing how women use devices dif­fer­ent­ly than men, so they put more into the design aes­thet­ic. Like there’s a ring or a bracelet you can touch if you’re feel­ing unsafe and it will send a mes­sage with your loca­tion and that you might be in trou­ble. That’s an inter­est­ing angle as well.

And which offers the most opportunity to marketers? Why?

I think, again, this varies with the intend­ed audi­ence and what they’re try­ing to reach, but two things have stuck out as best in class: The Chipo­tle app on the Apple Watch has a Chipo­tle but­ton in which you can save your favorite order and just press the but­ton to order it on the Apple Watch. It’s tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that the screen is small­er and 10 sec­onds or less is the rec­om­mend­ed design inter­ac­tion time and it’s so sim­ple and easy and is some­thing con­sumers have been want­i­ng and it solves that prob­lem, which is the point of going to the store and wait­ing in line and tak­ing time out from your day. [And then there’s] Ralph Lau­ren at the U.S. Open last year, which had a smart shirt that tracked play­ers’ behav­ior and sent stats to coach, so he can tell [the play­er] what to change. It’s two very dif­fer­ent use cas­es, but they are good exam­ples of know­ing the audi­ence and what best serves them and what util­i­ty you can pro­vide. For Chipo­tle, it’s sim­plic­i­ty and ease of use. For Ralph Lau­ren, it’s a new way to access stats and info. As long as brands and mar­keters design with their con­sumer in mind and a pain point in mind, that’s the best way to be suc­cess­ful.

It’s tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that the screen is small­er and 10 sec­onds or less is the rec­om­mend­ed design inter­ac­tion time and it’s so sim­ple and easy and is some­thing con­sumers have been want­i­ng and it solves that prob­lem, which is the point of going to the store and wait­ing in line and tak­ing time out from your day. [And then there’s] Ralph Lau­ren at the U.S. Open last year, which had a smart shirt that tracked play­ers’ behav­ior and sent stats to coach, so he can tell [the play­er] what to change. It’s two very dif­fer­ent use cas­es, but they are good exam­ples of know­ing the audi­ence and what best serves them and what util­i­ty you can pro­vide. For Chipo­tle, it’s sim­plic­i­ty and ease of use. For Ralph Lau­ren, it’s a new way to access stats and info. As long as brands and mar­keters design with their con­sumer in mind and a pain point in mind, that’s the best way to be suc­cess­ful.

It’s two very dif­fer­ent use cas­es, but they are good exam­ples of know­ing the audi­ence and what best serves them and what util­i­ty you can pro­vide. For Chipo­tle, it’s sim­plic­i­ty and ease of use. For Ralph Lau­ren, it’s a new way to access stats and info. As long as brands and mar­keters design with their con­sumer in mind and a pain point in mind, that’s the best way to be suc­cess­ful.

Anything else?

It’s such an inter­est­ing space and so ear­ly and it’s real­ly excit­ing to see where it will go. Some­thing with wear­ables just start­ing to be explored is how do they inte­grate into the rest of your life, like with IOT and wear­ables and the home and the car and the ubiq­ui­tous Inter­net con­nec­tion all around you, so I think that’s the next lev­el. Ford has in the past been play­ing around with a bio­met­ric steer­ing wheel that can tell if you’re stressed and prone to road rage or if you’re falling asleep and it can course cor­rect. If it’s con­nect­ed to a wear­able, what are the impli­ca­tions? It’s an inter­est­ing area to start think­ing about, espe­cial­ly if IOT is expect­ed to explode. How does it all fit? No one has a clear answer. There’s the idea of a pro­gram­ma­ble life, but what does it mean and how does it man­i­fest beyond just indi­vid­ual devices?

If it’s con­nect­ed to a wear­able, what are the impli­ca­tions? It’s an inter­est­ing area to start think­ing about, espe­cial­ly if IOT is expect­ed to explode. How does it all fit? No one has a clear answer. There’s the idea of a pro­gram­ma­ble life, but what does it mean and how does it man­i­fest beyond just indi­vid­ual devices?

Ford has in the past been play­ing around with a bio­met­ric steer­ing wheel that can tell if you’re stressed and prone to road rage or if you’re falling asleep and it can course cor­rect. If it’s con­nect­ed to a wear­able, what are the impli­ca­tions? It’s an inter­est­ing area to start think­ing about, espe­cial­ly if IOT is expect­ed to explode. How does it all fit? No one has a clear answer. There’s the idea of a pro­gram­ma­ble life, but what does it mean and how does it man­i­fest beyond just indi­vid­ual devices?

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Fred Gerantabee, Director of Creative Technology at Grey

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

While it’s ear­ly in the game to say for sure, the Apple Watch is already prov­ing to stand out among its com­peti­tors. A lot of this is due to Apple’s focus on design and con­sis­ten­cy in the ecosys­tem. Android Wear watch­es boast many of the same fea­tures, but due to the many vari­a­tions in the Android expe­ri­ence across the phone mar­ket, there is that dan­ger of a per­ceived dis­con­nect from some­one’s own phone expe­ri­ence. It’s a great exam­ple of peo­ple pay­ing for

It’s a great exam­ple of peo­ple pay­ing for expe­ri­ence, even above util­i­ty. Their jump on the mobile pay­ment mar­ket with the exten­sion of Apple Pay (as well as address­ing logis­ti­cal con­cerns with secu­ri­ty) puts them in a strong posi­tion even after being a cou­ple of years late to the smart watch game.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

I think watch­es are a nat­ur­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for mar­keters, but not in some form of intru­sive mobile adver­tis­ing. Rather, the per­son­al and teth­ered nature of a watch lends itself to short, high­ly per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing that is use­ful and feels nat­ur­al. This can and will be a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the push mes­sag­ing that’s already com­mon place on smart­phones. Cre­ative­ly this will impose some chal­lenges (few­er char­ac­ters, less real estate), but in a

Cre­ative­ly this will impose some chal­lenges (few­er char­ac­ters, less real estate), but in a way this will force us to be more con­cise. From a data stand­point, I think any device that mea­sures core behav­iors and activ­i­ty may be use­ful – but ide­al­ly some­thing that allows two-way exchange of infor­ma­tion will be most use­ful (rather than a sin­gle-use device that only col­lects data).

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Mike Harris, Global Chief Strategy Officer at 180LA

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

I’m not sure if any wear­able to date has real stay­ing pow­er. The space is so new and chang­ing rapid­ly. That said, I do think that wear­able tech­nol­o­gy is def­i­nite­ly going to have an increas­ing role in our lives. And with Apple in the game with their watch, I’d bet that wear­ables will become main­stream and only get bet­ter and bet­ter. I think wear­able tech­nol­o­gy embed­ded in cloth­ing is a huge poten­tial busi­ness. Lots of brands from fit­ness brands like Nike and Under Armour to insur­ance com­pa­nies to food brands can launch wear­able tech­nol­o­gy in cloth­ing for a vast vari­ety of rea­sons. Brands won’t have to ask peo­ple to buy addi­tion­al com­po­nents either because every­one — except for a few neigh­bor­hoods in San Fran­cis­co — wears clothes every day.

Lots of brands from fit­ness brands like Nike and Under Armour to insur­ance com­pa­nies to food brands can launch wear­able tech­nol­o­gy in cloth­ing for a vast vari­ety of rea­sons. Brands won’t have to ask peo­ple to buy addi­tion­al com­po­nents either because every­one — except for a few neigh­bor­hoods in San Fran­cis­co — wears clothes every day.

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Ben Peters, Digital Strategist at Struck

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

The one that removes the most fric­tion from someone’s life, or enrich­es them in some new way. These are the require­ments for any new tech­nol­o­gy, and wear­ables are no dif­fer­ent. Right now the cat­e­go­ry is so emer­gent that it’s hard to see which will strike that bal­ance; it’s an era of broad exper­i­men­ta­tion that is just get­ting under­way. It may be that wear­ables sim­ply become a new key or hub to a con­nect­ed envi­ron­ment, it could be that they take on new dimen­sions in the way we com­mu­ni­cate and inter­act with the world. It real­ly is

Right now the cat­e­go­ry is so emer­gent that it’s hard to see which will strike that bal­ance; it’s an era of broad exper­i­men­ta­tion that is just get­ting under­way. It may be that wear­ables sim­ply become a new key or hub to a con­nect­ed envi­ron­ment, it could be that they take on new dimen­sions in the way we com­mu­ni­cate and inter­act with the world. It real­ly is undis­cov­ered coun­try.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

The fun­da­men­tal promise of wear­ables is “more per­son­al, more per­sis­tent, more con­tex­tu­al.” Any tech­nol­o­gy that starts with a promise like that will find trac­tion in some way with brands, since that com­bi­na­tion is basi­cal­ly a marketer’s dream. How that oppor­tu­ni­ty will man­i­fest remains to be seen; hope­ful­ly we won’t treat it like yet anoth­er dis­rup­tive ad unit and focus more on its role in a total brand expe­ri­ence. To us, the next big fron­tier is in expe­ri­ence design as a prac­tice, where brands will focus on these ever-increas­ing touch­points and real­ly con­sid­er what an appro­pri­ate role can be and how best to make that user’s life bet­ter in a larg­er view of a brand rela­tion­ship. That’s the real promise of this tech­nol­o­gy. For some, it may not be appro­pri­ate at all.

How that oppor­tu­ni­ty will man­i­fest remains to be seen; hope­ful­ly we won’t treat it like yet anoth­er dis­rup­tive ad unit and focus more on its role in a total brand expe­ri­ence. To us, the next big fron­tier is in expe­ri­ence design as a prac­tice, where brands will focus on these ever-increas­ing touch­points and real­ly con­sid­er what an appro­pri­ate role can be and how best to make that user’s life bet­ter in a larg­er view of a brand rela­tion­ship. That’s the real promise of this tech­nol­o­gy. For some, it may not be appro­pri­ate at all.

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Dan Fox, Vice President and Executive Creative Technology Director at CP+B

It’s like­ly that the wear­able tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket will con­tin­ue to evolve before a clear cat­e­go­ry killer appears in the space. The Apple Watch will cer­tain­ly launch with con­sid­er­able momen­tum giv­en Apple’s thriv­ing sys­tem of devel­op­ers, users and exist­ing apps. But while the watch will con­tain incre­men­tal improve­ments and inno­va­tions, it doesn’t rep­re­sent a par­a­digm shift in our expe­ri­ence with tech­nol­o­gy. Things in the wear­able space will get much more inter­est­ing when we are able to make the rela­tion­ship even more per­son­al. Devel­op­ing safe and cheap capa­bil­i­ties to print cir­cuits in the fab­ric of our cloth­ing or to implant tech­nol­o­gy arti­facts with­in our skin will fun­da­men­tal­ly change how we relate to tech­nol­o­gy. These types of capa­bil­i­ties may be clos­er to readi­ness than you real­ize.

Things in the wear­able space will get much more inter­est­ing when we are able to make the rela­tion­ship even more per­son­al. Devel­op­ing safe and cheap capa­bil­i­ties to print cir­cuits in the fab­ric of our cloth­ing or to implant tech­nol­o­gy arti­facts with­in our skin will fun­da­men­tal­ly change how we relate to tech­nol­o­gy. These types of capa­bil­i­ties may be clos­er to readi­ness than you real­ize.

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Michael Phillips, Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Level Studios

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

While in five years from now, we may find our­selves at home with VR gog­gles and 3D sound-enabled head­phones strapped to our heads, I’m putting my mon­ey on dig­i­tal watch­es as the prod­uct with the longest stay­ing pow­er. It’s far eas­i­er to con­vince con­sumers to replace an exist­ing prod­uct they own with a bet­ter, more advanced ver­sion, as they’ve already adopt­ed the trend. The newest gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal watch­es

The newest gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal watch­es are ben­e­fit­ing from recent learn­ings gained since first being intro­duced to the mar­ket­place. Prod­ucts like the Nike Fuel­Band, Peb­ble Smart­watch, and Jaw­bone Up were ear­ly movers that have paved the way for this new gen­er­a­tion. The tech­nol­o­gy has since improved dra­mat­i­cal­ly in screen size, pro­cess­ing pow­er, bat­tery life, wire­less charg­ing and more, and prod­uct, soft­ware and visu­al design­ers have learned how and when peo­ple want to inter­act with these devices – bring­ing an ele­ment of per­son­al­iza­tion and allure to the enhanced prod­uct.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

The biggest oppor­tu­ni­ty lies with brands that focus on deliv­er­ing a prod­uct that pro­vides util­i­ty or enter­tain­ment, or sim­ply improves people’s lives. The watch, for exam­ple, is a sta­ple item that, when used to enable the col­lec­tion of data and behav­ioral insight, can enhance the way con­sumers shop and dri­ve deep­er lev­els of engage­ment and prof­itabil­i­ty for retail­ers. As user adop­tion rates increase, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing in-store pay­ments via the watch will quick­ly become a real­i­ty.

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Matthew Dooley, COO of Kapture

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

It’s still ear­ly, but con­sumers have respond­ed real­ly well to sim­ple wear­ables, and it’s because sim­plic­i­ty dri­ves adop­tion with­in an emerg­ing mar­ket. Less func­tion­al­i­ty also means there’s more room for design – hence Mis­fit’s part­ner­ship with Swarovs­ki and Fit­bit’s with Tory Burch. The big play­ers, like Sam­sung and Apple, are now in the game and that’s good for every­one. More con­sumers will come to the table, and wear­able tech com­pa­nies will con­tin­ue to evolve and bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate their ini­tial ben­e­fits.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

The wear­able that con­sumers actu­al­ly wear. The sweet spot is between wear­able and tech, where peo­ple have rea­son to use it and to include it in their dai­ly wardrobe. Now that Apple has entered the game, you’re going to see more com­pe­ti­tion and faster inno­va­tion. There will be more than one win­ner, and they’ll include those prod­ucts that give peo­ple val­ue that they can’t get any­where else (e.g. their smart­phone).

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Savannah Peterson, Director of Innovation Strategy at Speck Design

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

I’ve spent my career in hard­ware, and am still not sure we’ve yet found the wear­able solu­tion that will real­ly sing. Apple is lead­ing the pack as they had the largest com­mu­ni­ty to draw upon, but I’m not yet con­vinced that putting a com­put­er on our wrist is real­ly the solu­tion. The best win­ning wear­ables will be effort­less. They won’t be dis­tract­ing. They won’t inter­rupt our moments, but rather be there to cap­ture them when we want to pre­serve them for­ev­er. This is one of the rea­sons I like up-and-com­er Kap­ture Audio. Their wear­able has one func­tion: record audio 24/7, con­stant­ly delet­ing audio that’s not saved. That way, when grand­ma drops her epic wis­dom or baby says his first words, there’s no screen in between you and the moment. All you have to do with their device is sim­ply tap your wrist to save the audio of that moment with­out ever hav­ing to leave it (it uploads to your phone for use or lis­ten­ing at a time when you’re bet­ter suit­ed to deal with a device). I also think that Mis­fit is doing a great job with this through prod­ucts like the Shine. There are enough cables in our lives (some­thing Apple just assumes we’ll put up with because their hard­ware is beau­ti­ful). Shine is bat­tery-oper­at­ed and only has to be “thought about” every six months. It’s small, thin, can be worn in a vari­ety of form fac­tors and does­n’t dis­tract the wear­er or the peo­ple around them while in use. This is more on point with the future. Prod­ucts that work with your lifestyle, brands that under­stand the need to be present in the world, are the future of wear­ables. Com­pa­nies need to stop try­ing to pull us

This is one of the rea­sons I like up-and-com­er Kap­ture Audio. Their wear­able has one func­tion: record audio 24/7, con­stant­ly delet­ing audio that’s not saved. That way, when grand­ma drops her epic wis­dom or baby says his first words, there’s no screen in between you and the moment. All you have to do with their device is sim­ply tap your wrist to save the audio of that moment with­out ever hav­ing to leave it (it uploads to your phone for use or lis­ten­ing at a time when you’re bet­ter suit­ed to deal with a device). I also think that Mis­fit is doing a great job with this through prod­ucts like the Shine. There are enough cables in our lives (some­thing Apple just assumes we’ll put up with because their hard­ware is beau­ti­ful). Shine is bat­tery-oper­at­ed and only has to be “thought about” every six months. It’s small, thin, can be worn in a vari­ety of form fac­tors and does­n’t dis­tract the wear­er or the peo­ple around them while in use. This is more on point with the future. Prod­ucts that work with your lifestyle, brands that under­stand the need to be present in the world, are the future of wear­ables. Com­pa­nies need to stop try­ing to pull us

I also think that Mis­fit is doing a great job with this through prod­ucts like the Shine. There are enough cables in our lives (some­thing Apple just assumes we’ll put up with because their hard­ware is beau­ti­ful). Shine is bat­tery-oper­at­ed and only has to be “thought about” every six months. It’s small, thin, can be worn in a vari­ety of form fac­tors and does­n’t dis­tract the wear­er or the peo­ple around them while in use. This is more on point with the future. Prod­ucts that work with your lifestyle, brands that under­stand the need to be present in the world, are the future of wear­ables. Com­pa­nies need to stop try­ing to pull us out, and think about what they can add in to our expe­ri­ences. I think we’ll phys­i­cal­ly see less in wear­ables mov­ing for­ward. It’s hard to make hard­ware sexy, and even the best acces­so­ry or piece of jew­el­ry isn’t one that’s worn every day. Prod­ucts that can be tucked in a bra or embed­ded in ones’ cloth­ing will begin to emerge. The assump­tion that we want to show every­one that we’re quan­ti­fy­ing some­thing about our­selves is false. How many peo­ple actu­al­ly feel good respond­ing to some­one’s inquiry about their wear­able, say­ing, “I feel fat so I’m track­ing my steps to try and lose weight.” No one. We want to know what we want to know with­out the world hav­ing to know. Tech­ni­cal­ly it’s been a chal­lenge, as com­po­nent sizes weren’t orig­i­nal­ly designed to be worn, but now demand is dri­ving scale, scale dri­ving minia­tur­iza­tion. Women out­buy men in every sin­gle con­sumer cat­e­go­ry except for con­sumer elec­tron­ics. Why? Because their prod­ucts are designed for men, by men. By in large, this has been the sto­ry for wear­ables as well. No woman feels ele­gant in dress acces­sorized by black sil­i­cone wrapped around her wrists. Three stand­outs in this space come to mind:

I think we’ll phys­i­cal­ly see less in wear­ables mov­ing for­ward. It’s hard to make hard­ware sexy, and even the best acces­so­ry or piece of jew­el­ry isn’t one that’s worn every day. Prod­ucts that can be tucked in a bra or embed­ded in ones’ cloth­ing will begin to emerge. The assump­tion that we want to show every­one that we’re quan­ti­fy­ing some­thing about our­selves is false. How many peo­ple actu­al­ly feel good respond­ing to some­one’s inquiry about their wear­able, say­ing, “I feel fat so I’m track­ing my steps to try and lose weight.” No one. We want to know what we want to know with­out the world hav­ing to know. Tech­ni­cal­ly it’s been a chal­lenge, as com­po­nent sizes weren’t orig­i­nal­ly designed to be worn, but now demand is dri­ving scale, scale dri­ving minia­tur­iza­tion. Women out­buy men in every sin­gle con­sumer cat­e­go­ry except for con­sumer elec­tron­ics. Why? Because their prod­ucts are designed for men, by men. By in large, this has been the sto­ry for wear­ables as well. No woman feels ele­gant in dress acces­sorized by black sil­i­cone wrapped around her wrists. Three stand­outs in this space come to mind:

How many peo­ple actu­al­ly feel good respond­ing to some­one’s inquiry about their wear­able, say­ing, “I feel fat so I’m track­ing my steps to try and lose weight.” No one. We want to know what we want to know with­out the world hav­ing to know. Tech­ni­cal­ly it’s been a chal­lenge, as com­po­nent sizes weren’t orig­i­nal­ly designed to be worn, but now demand is dri­ving scale, scale dri­ving minia­tur­iza­tion. Women out­buy men in every sin­gle con­sumer cat­e­go­ry except for con­sumer elec­tron­ics. Why? Because their prod­ucts are designed for men, by men. By in large, this has been the sto­ry for wear­ables as well. No woman feels ele­gant in dress acces­sorized by black sil­i­cone wrapped around her wrists. Three stand­outs in this space come to mind:

Three stand­outs in this space come to mind: Ring­ly and Cuff — two female-led acces­sories com­pa­nies mak­ing a ring and cuff respec­tive­ly that are “smart” — they’re still a bit clunky, but they’ve got the right idea. Dis­rupt the buy­ing pat­terns in the space by actu­al­ly look­ing at where the mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty is, and you win. Peri­od. The oth­er com­pa­ny that took a lot of heat for going down this path but is actu­al­ly quite inspir­ing is Intel. Their smart bracelet needs a bit of fine tun­ing, but it was the first con­cert­ed effort from a For­tune 100 brand to design wear­ables that appeal to women. I’m proud of them, and excit­ed to see what they do next.

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Jack Dalrymple, Owner of Cap and Cut

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

The great­est stay­ing pow­er will fall to what­ev­er device can give peo­ple access to the elec­tron­ic world with min­i­mal effort from their bod­ies. At the end of this wear­ables race, this will be aug­ment­ed real­i­ty devices includ­ing glass­es, sun­glass­es, gog­gles and any­thing that can give full HUDs (Heads Up Dis­plays) to users. Google Glass failed with this because the dis­play was too small and inef­fec­tive, but Microsoft HoloLens will pick up where it left off. In the near future, devices like this will be more mobile with cel­lu­lar inte­gra­tion, all-day bat­tery life and visu­al qual­i­ty like HTC’s Vive. At this point, con­sumers will not be able to live with­out it, any more than they could live with­out their

At this point, con­sumers will not be able to live with­out it, any more than they could live with­out their cell­phones today. Some of the dif­fer­ences in life will be:

• Tex­ting while dri­ving or even walk­ing will be much safer because atten­tion will not need to be divert­ed.
• There will not be sep­a­rate game con­soles; you will just dark­en the out­side world and be in full VR.
• Every­thing every one of us does and sees will be on cam­era and this will be accept­ed as a nec­es­sary evil for the added con­ve­niences of the device.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

AR is also the pin­na­cle of mar­keters’ dreams. When tar­get­ed mes­sag­ing can be placed in our sur­round­ings with cus­tomers’ abil­i­ty to inter­act in real time with prod­uct and ad place­ment, the world will look very dif­fer­ent. If you want to look far down the AR road, the glass­es will even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear and con­tent will deliv­ered through con­tact lens­es and even­tu­al­ly con­sumer reti­nal implants.

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Allison Miller, Head of Marketing for SunSprite

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

Fit­bit is the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on of wear­able tech to date. It’s the Kleenex of wear­ables. We’ve seen this brand strength help in busi­ness­es hun­dreds of times over. Via­gra was the first ED med on the mar­ket; Cialis came out with a bet­ter prod­uct (worked faster, last­ed longer, few­er side effects). And yet, Via­gra still reigns as king. When you’re syn­ony­mous with the indus­try itself (wear­ables = Fit­bit), even bet­ter tech­nol­o­gy won’t push you out. I still think that the “best wear­able” is yet to come. It will be the smart­phone of per­son­al track­ing. It will com­bine all track­ing (heart rate, steps, sun, sleep) in a sleek exe­cu­tion that works for both men and women, for both day and night. The bat­tery will be a coin cell and last for 6 to 9 months with auto­mat­ic renew­al from the brand. It will not just mon­i­tor, it will coach. It won’t just count steps, it will encour­age true behav­ior change. It will embody cus­tomiza­tion with­out feel­ing too “Big Broth­er.” And, real­ly, it’ll be like your mom is in your ear at all times.

And, real­ly, it’ll be like your mom is in your ear at all times.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

The world of pedome­ters is staid. The greater oppor­tu­ni­ty sits with wear­ables that solve a true prob­lem but with low brand aware­ness. Wear­ables like Sun­Sprite that track your light intake to help treat depres­sion or like Tzoa, which helps track air pol­lu­tion. And lest we for­get, not all wear­ables are for per­son­al track­ing. Some of the most inter­est­ing wear­ables are ges­tic­u­lar, like a next-gen ver­sion of the Nin­ten­do Wii remote, which can allow us to con­trol our TV or our home alarm sys­tem.

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Jim Letourneau, Vice President of Marketing and Technology at wearables accessories firm Design.UX

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

Fit­bit is the mar­ket leader and it will be dif­fi­cult for oth­er devices to com­pete with them on fit­ness track­ing. How­ev­er, the future of wear­ables is much big­ger than that. Track­ing is just the tip of the ice­berg. Wear­ables will be used for pay­ments, access to cars/buildings, geo­t­rack­ing, med­ical mon­i­tor­ing, etc. Com­pa­nies are fight­ing for mar­ket share know­ing that Fit­bit will soon incor­po­rate addi­tion­al func­tion­al­i­ty with addi­tion­al sen­sors. Their stay­ing pow­er lies in their large user base and con­sumer friend­ly designs. That could all change quick­ly if Apple’s iWatch cap­tures con­sumer’s atten­tion. Nike killed off its suc­cess­ful Fuel­Band most like­ly in antic­i­pa­tion of prod­ucts like the iWatch.

Their stay­ing pow­er lies in their large user base and con­sumer friend­ly designs. That could all change quick­ly if Apple’s iWatch cap­tures con­sumer’s atten­tion. Nike killed off its suc­cess­ful Fuel­Band most like­ly in antic­i­pa­tion of prod­ucts like the iWatch.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

The biggest oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands/marketers may be get­ting the atten­tion of afflu­ent con­sumers who pur­chase an iWatch through co-brand­ed apps for spe­cif­ic nich­es. For exam­ple, 90 per­cent of Coachel­la atten­dees use iOS. Fit­bit part­nered with Tory Burch and Jaw­bone recent­ly announced a co-brand with Amer­i­can Express. Oth­er low­er tier wear­ables will like­ly be more open to part­ner­ing.

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Bob Zurek, Senior Vice President of Products, Epsilon

Which wearable device do they think has the most staying power and why?

We will see a sig­nif­i­cant bat­tle between wear­able devices over the next two years and it will like­ly be between the Apple Watch and the Peb­ble Steel. Why? Pri­mar­i­ly because they are inno­v­a­tive lead­ers in the mar­ket and have a sig­nif­i­cant fan bases that are high­ly evan­ge­lis­tic with their social net­works.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers and why?

The jury is still out on which will dri­ve brands toward their respec­tive devices. Apple clear­ly has an advan­tage as they have proven suc­cess with their dig­i­tal ecosys­tem and near­ly 800 mil­lion iTunes users as well as their brick and mor­tar stores that have a wide glob­al reach. As mar­keters begin to incor­po­rate the Apple Watch into their dig­i­tal mes­sag­ing strat­e­gy, the oppor­tu­ni­ty will lie in con­ve­nient com­mu­ni­ca­tions. With the empha­sis on read­ing and not inter­act­ing, mar­keters can pro­vide a rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence for the con­sumer by using a com­bi­na­tion of email tuned for the Apple Watch and cre­ative noti­fi­ca­tions focused on col­or,

With the empha­sis on read­ing and not inter­act­ing, mar­keters can pro­vide a rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence for the con­sumer by using a com­bi­na­tion of email tuned for the Apple Watch and cre­ative noti­fi­ca­tions focused on col­or, graph­ics and ani­ma­tion. As Epsilon CEO Andy Fraw­ley points out in his book “Ignit­ing Cus­tomer Con­nec­tions,” every moment of cus­tomer inter­ac­tion is an atom­ic moment of truth or an oppor­tu­ni­ty to advance and enhance the con­tin­u­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tion towards the buy­ing deci­sion – and this is exact­ly the val­ue the Apple Watch and oth­er wear­ables will bring mar­keters.

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Andrew Rutledge, Associate Creative Director at Bradley and Montgomery

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

We’ve learned that peo­ple aren’t will­ing to look ridicu­lous for the ben­e­fit of tech. Wear­ables that make it into the main­stream will be the ones that seam­less­ly blend with our every­day lives. Here’s hop­ing for a reti­nal implant that auto­mat­i­cal­ly blocks out­door ads and turns tears into espres­so.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

Wear­ables with bio­met­rics will be an inter­est­ing place to deliv­er super-con­tex­tu­al mes­sages (if the user relin­quish­es that data). Bio­met­rics will be an area where brands/marketers can start to flex some new mus­cles. Your heart rate / body temp goes up and you get a Twit­ter noti­fi­ca­tion that con­tains a code for a free bot­tle of water from Fiji that you can redeem from a vend­ing machine that auto­mat­i­cal­ly detects your code – whoa. Bring on the dehy­drat­ed Piz­za Hut piz­za from “Back to the Future”!

Your heart rate / body temp goes up and you get a Twit­ter noti­fi­ca­tion that con­tains a code for a free bot­tle of water from Fiji that you can redeem from a vend­ing machine that auto­mat­i­cal­ly detects your code – whoa. Bring on the dehy­drat­ed Piz­za Hut piz­za from “Back to the Future”!

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John Milinovich, CEO of URX, a deeplink search engine for developers.

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

Wear­ables are going to be a big deal for mar­keters that use push noti­fi­ca­tions or loca­tion aware ser­vices as a key part of their user engage­ment strat­e­gy. How­ev­er, at this point, it’s total­ly unclear which device or even form fac­tor (e.g., watch, band, glass) will reach mass mar­ket adop­tion to have broad impact. Mar­keters shouldn’t focus on devices. They should be think­ing about how and where they would want to engage users that don’t involve open­ing an app on their phone and build those capa­bil­i­ties.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

In the short term, the Apple Watch clear­ly offers more oppor­tu­ni­ty for buzz and brand asso­ci­a­tion. Sim­i­lar to the ear­ly days of the iPhone, the tight­ly inte­grat­ed ecosys­tem will pro­vide the best expe­ri­ence for a new class of device. But fast for­ward a cou­ple years from now, gener­ic devices that run Android and can han­dle a stan­dard­ized set of user noti­fi­ca­tions will have the most impact glob­al­ly, sim­i­lar to Android OS mar­ket share today. Also, open plat­forms like Android Wear make it eas­i­er for devel­op­ers to iter­ate both at the app lev­el as well as the form fac­tor lev­el.

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John Sawyer, Director of Global Corporate Communications at Teradata Marketing Applications

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

When the iPad was first intro­duced to the mar­ket, peo­ple described it as inno­v­a­tive, unique, and dis­rup­tive. Five years lat­er, Apple, one of the largest tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies in his­to­ry, is re-enger­iz­ing the indus­try with the wear­able, Apple Watch. Already, the watch has been dis­trib­uted glob­al­ly, mak­ing it one of the most wide­ly avail­able devices for con­sumers. Why does the Apple Watch have the most stay­ing pow­er in today’s wear­ables indus­try? It’s inti­mate – claim­ing to be the most per­son­al device yet – the watch is high­ly cus­tomiz­able and enables users to eas­i­ly access infor­ma­tion that mat­ters to inter­act and

It’s inti­mate – claim­ing to be the most per­son­al device yet – the watch is high­ly cus­tomiz­able and enables users to eas­i­ly access infor­ma­tion that mat­ters to inter­act and engage with the world around them. Mar­ket trends have shown that con­sumers are increas­ing­ly will­ing to pro­vide per­son­al data in exchange for an improved engage­ment and/or expe­ri­ence. Not only that, the Apple Watch is lever­ag­ing one of the hottest trends right now: The Inter­net of Things. We’re only begin­ning to scratch the sur­face of the tremen­dous poten­tial for the Inter­net of Things – a move­ment focused entire­ly on mak­ing lives bet­ter and eas­i­er by using insights from data to dri­ve pur­pose­ful action. The key is to seam­less­ly blend tech­nol­o­gy, things and peo­ple to cre­ate mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions – like the Apple Watch is poised to do. That being said, it does have some hur­dles to over­come and issues to address to main­tain the same lega­cy asso­ci­at­ed with the iPad and iPod. Things like usabil­i­ty — does it real­ly help the con­sumer if they have more than 2 mil­lion set­tings for the clock? Addi­tion­al­ly, Apple needs to keep in mind the lev­el of sat­u­ra­tion in the mar­ket. Con­sumers are con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed with new devices and tech­nolo­gies. But if the watch can dis­tance itself from its com­peti­tors and pro­vide the unique expe­ri­ence it’s promised, then users will won­der how they ever lived with­out it.

The key is to seam­less­ly blend tech­nol­o­gy, things and peo­ple to cre­ate mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions – like the Apple Watch is poised to do. That being said, it does have some hur­dles to over­come and issues to address to main­tain the same lega­cy asso­ci­at­ed with the iPad and iPod. Things like usabil­i­ty — does it real­ly help the con­sumer if they have more than 2 mil­lion set­tings for the clock? Addi­tion­al­ly, Apple needs to keep in mind the lev­el of sat­u­ra­tion in the mar­ket. Con­sumers are con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed with new devices and tech­nolo­gies. But if the watch can dis­tance itself from its com­peti­tors and pro­vide the unique expe­ri­ence it’s promised, then users will won­der how they ever lived with­out it.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunity for brands/marketers?

The biggest oppor­tu­ni­ty in the wear­able indus­try for brands and mar­keters right now is lever­ag­ing the health care-ori­ent­ed appli­ca­tions. Things like Run­tas­tic and Fit­bit offer huge oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­ket­ing because health-relat­ed issues become an indi­vid­u­al’s fix­a­tion, cre­at­ing a hunger for more self-improve­ment. Con­sumers crave more inti­mate, indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion. They want rel­e­vant inter­ac­tions. And they’re begin­ning to under­stand the val­ue of their data, which is the fuel that gen­er­ates intel­li­gent insights. There is

There is vast oppor­tu­ni­ty with­in these chang­ing dynam­ics of human inter­ac­tion. But before any of those oppor­tu­ni­ties can be real­ized there has to be trust – trust between con­sumers and the com­pa­nies they are shar­ing data with. Brands and mar­keters who use this per­son­al data to deliv­er an improved engagement/experience for the con­sumer, will reap the busi­ness ben­e­fits through the price­less trust that has been built – ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to long-last­ing brand loy­al­ty.

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Larry Roth, Senior Partner, Technology at Tenet Partners

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

The Apple Watch appears that it will have the most stay­ing pow­er. It has the high­est adop­tion rate of any wear­able, and it pro­vides the most ver­sa­til­i­ty. Plus, it’s the most styl­ish! The best days of the Apple Watch still lie ahead as it doesn’t even ben­e­fit from devel­op­ers hav­ing the abil­i­ty to cre­ate native apps yet.

Which wearable offers the biggest opportunities for brands/marketers? Why?

The secret sauce for both brands and mar­keters will be to sup­port the glance­able ide­ol­o­gy of the watch. Help the con­sumer, give them the infor­ma­tion they need, and then get out of the way. With wear­ables that do not have dis­plays, like Fit­bit and Jaw­bone, the secret will be in part­ner­ships that bring more func­tion­al­i­ty to the wear­able in the form of con­ve­nience and data analy­sis fea­tures.

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Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

Nat­u­ral­ly smart watch­es have the most stay­ing pow­er — this is the evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy get­ting small­er and more con­ve­nient. Smart­watch­es can be seen as the begin­ning of the end for smart­phones once they project 3D images from a light on the watch. Don’t sleep on the Microsoft HoloLens and tech­nol­o­gy like this. Microsoft­’s Cor­tana already blows Siri out of the water in terms of answers, insight, and voice recog­ni­tion. HoloLens is anoth­er real­ly good ini­tia­tive. The idea of not need­ing a screen to do any­thing and sim­ply using holo­grams is pow­er­ful and has the most stay­ing pow­er.

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Rit Mishra, Lead Designer at Idean

Which wearable do you think has the most staying power? Why?

Android wear has been in the mar­ket for some time now, along with a few oth­er play­ers like Peb­ble, Fit­bit, Nike, etc. With the Apple watch release the wear­ables mar­ket is going to explode. There are already reports point­ing out that Apple Watch will cap­ture over half the smart watch mar­ket. With tech fanat­ics and Apple fan­boys, it’s pret­ty evi­dent that Apple Watch will cer­tain­ly win the wear­ables bat­tle in the short run. For long-term suc­cess there are three key fac­tors for wear­able tech:

1. Val­ue and rea­son for users to strap a piece of tech­nol­o­gy on their wrist. Apple HealthK­it is try­ing to unlock mean­ing for cus­tomers and bring val­ue that has deep impact on their lives and a com­pelling rea­son to com­mit to a wear­able. Wear­ables that will focus on health, fit­ness, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and finance/payments will have more adop­tion in the long run, and it looks like Apple is mak­ing the right steps in that direc­tion.
2. Wear­ables as smart jew­el­ries. Wear­ables are at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and fash­ion. Users want fash­ion pieces that are con­ver­sa­tion starters and reflect their own per­son­al­i­ty. Play­ers who will be able to cre­ate com­pelling smart fash­ion pieces with mean­ing and val­ue will win in the long run. We have already seen Apple mak­ing the right strides with beau­ti­ful piece of indus­tri­al design and Apple Watch Edi­tion (Gold), which are mar­ket­ed as smart fash­ion objects.
3. Tech. Bat­tery life is still a big deter­rent for wear­able adop­tion. Recharg­ing wear­able tech every day is a big annoy­ance and even­tu­al­ly users give up. For long-term suc­cess, it’s impor­tant for com­pa­nies to focus on bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and make wear­ables stand­alone com­put­ing devices rather than rely­ing on smart phones.