Wearable tech scares the living daylights out of marketers

Think your marketing department won’t be affected by the launch of the Apple Watch earlier this week? Think again.

The impact of wearable technology will impact far more than just fashion and digital design trends. Even if the adoption rate isn’t as high as is predicted, the trend that will soon cause a flurry of frantic activity in marketing offices around the world is the impending change in information consumption.

Both studies based on formal research and those based on pure observation have proven that information consumption trends have changed significantly in a short period of time.

These days the most popular written pieces tend to be those divided by sub-headings, as it helps readers who have learned the skill of consuming short bytes of information at lightning speeds, to stick to longer form content. Even the decision on whether or not to read the full written piece is sometimes based on the value of information received from reading only the subheadings.

Long form content, although making a comeback this year, will always have a place, as people have an innate need to gather information. It is the format and length of lure that leads to informational long form pieces that has and will continue changing.

Major shakeups in the recent past for content creators (writers, marketers, PR professionals, journalists, videographers etc) include:

-        Email, which required a less formal approach than handwritten letters and allowed for more visually striking communication

-        SMS, which negated spelling and grammar to force sales messages into 160 characters

-        Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram etc which forced everyone to acknowledge the importance of social relationships in communication

-        Twitter, which brought the # back to life, made @ buttons on devices wear out quicker than ever, and chopped messages length to a tidy 140 characters.

Wearable technology, whether it is a smart watch or smart set of eyewear, has brought about a new disruption. With tiny screens, room for only a single message, adapted scrolling functionality, wearable technology demands extreme brevity like no tool before it.

For content creators, who spend countless hours producing perfectly poised materials, the looming change in information consumption is a scary business. What many clients don’t realise is that it takes the same amount of time, if not longer, to create a piece of content that is suitable for the brevity demanded by developing mobile technologies, than a longer piece suitable for print or computer.

Content creators need to become skilled in formats suitable for the extreme brevity that is demanded by wearable tech, and will also have to educate their clients on the need for messages in a variety of formats.

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