Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

As we approach Peak Smart Watch at the Apple event next week, manufacturers are racing to offer product to those who might not want to bow down to Cupertino in the coming months. The latest contender is the Moto 360, a steel and leather beauty that launched today alongside the new Motorola .

Although I’ve been duly impressed by the Samsung Gear series, you will immediately see that the design language of the 360 is far more chic. Made of a round piece of coated steel and featuring a nice leather band and Gorilla Glass crystal, the watch looks more like a Misfit Shine than a nerd accouterment.

How does it work? Well, if you’re not familiar with the vagaries of Android Wear, not very well at first. The interface consists of notifications that appear over the various watch faces available as well as a voice activated screen that allows you to ask for various pieces of information....

Investment firm Piper Jaffray has published the results of their recent fashion-focused survey, and while the poll was mostly about fashion and jewelry, it did touch on Apple’s much-rumored “iWatch.” The poll found that 14% of consumers would buy an iWatch that was priced at $350. Interest in such a device varied greatly based on price....

...Now, clearly, an iWatch will receive. It will be a screen. And a few months ago I would have imagined that its primary purpose would be to offload push messaging, step tracking, heart rate monitoring, music controls and other functions from the phone to the wrist. (And all of these things will likely be true).

But there’s potentially another paradigm in place – one that will be recognized by those who think long and hard about beacons. Because in addition to being another screen, data capture device and interface controller, I think the real value of an iWatch could come from someplace else.

Because what if, much like beacons, the iWatch was less a receiving screen and instead was more like a broadcaster? What if your watch was, like a beacon, a way to signal to the world around you: “I’m here, and here are the permissions I’m giving you, here are the rules of my being in this space, and if I choose to I’ll share my identity or let you send me messages and communicate.”

In this view, an iWatch (and other future wearables) shouldn’t just be a screen programmed to receive.

It’s a wearable form of identity and intent....