The Disconnect That Is Apple Watch's Promise of Better Connectivity

More immediate access to our emails and texts makes sense for a surgeon or someone who is about to learn of a life-changing lottery win.

The rest of us can wait.

Apple is betting that I’m wrong.

Are you going to trust its track record or mine?

Remember I’m the guy who made the second biggest mistake in recent Super Bowl history, incorrectly predicting for seven straight years that advertisers would move their commercials out of the 1970s and add a mobile call to action that would lead to ongoing engagement with millions of people. My latest fumble on that one got lost in Seahawks’ inexplicable throw at the end of the last Super Bowl.

But back to the question of whether the introduction of the Apple Watch is timely.

There isn’t a way to convince me that there is a pent-up demand for a quicker or more convenient path to information coming our way. With more than 75 percent of us in the United States packing a smartphone, and most keeping it within four feet day and night, is there a real problem with us either getting to our emails and texts or knowing that one or 75 are there?

I suppose that one group of prospective Apple Watch buyers includes those who have had to defend or sheepishly apologize for the all-too-obvious signal of an incoming email.

You know the guy on the Maui beach whose iPhone makes a popcorn-like sound each time an email arrives. My wife certainly does – for some reason, she stays married to him.

Or what about the fellow who enables “Visible and Vibrating Alerts” for incoming phone and FaceTime calls, new text messages, new and sent mail, and calendar events? He sets an LED light flash for incoming calls and alerts. A former colleague is guilty of this gross exaggeration of his importance.

At a conference last summer, Pebble’s head of partnerships and business development made an unconvincing argument for the need for his product, saying

“You cannot expect consumers to always be engaged on their mobile device.”

Really?

The use case he offered was for the traveler who must part with his or her cellphone while going through airport security. With Pebble, he said, you can still get your information in real time.

My hunch is that those who might be moderately interested are the road warriors who more than likely have TSA pre-screened status. I fit that description and my mobile phone is out of my possession for less than a minute. And somehow I survive.

In an interview for my upcoming book, ESPN’s John Kosner told me that score alerts in a glanceable format will keep more restaurant patrons from taking unneeded trips to the restroom and spouses from having to explain their absolutely need to keep the smartphone in one hand.

That’s true, but we’ve been getting a pass on that for years.

I have no doubt that the Apple Watch will provide other benefits, possibly health tracking in ways that will put the Fitbits of the world on the outside looking in.

Perhaps it will come in fashion, although it is obvious that folks like me favor form more than anything.

But the Apple Watch as a must-have way to be more connected? For me, that’s a disconnect.

(first appeared on imediaconnection.com http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/08/the-disconnect-that-is-apple-watchs-promise-of-better-connectivity/)

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Why Giving Your Spouse A Certain Fitness Band Can Get You In Trouble

A fitness band "that publicly shames the slacking user", huh? Here's my advice - don't give the Pavlok to your spouse or significant other.

A New York ice cream shop sees 5% of sales via mobile payments. And growth isn’t dripping in.

A study finds that half of Verizon customers are paying more than $100 a month with 14% above $200.

The first Instagram photo, posted four years ago this month, was of a happy dog. Then the service got legs.

Meanwhile, the inspiration for Pinterest was a collection of bugs.

eBay says that it sells 12,000-15,000 autos per week via mobile.

8:06 AM is when the majority of log-ins to mobile banking occur, as people start their day with a check of account balances.

Sandwich shop Cosi spends 30-40% of its marketing dollars on mobile, primarily to “solve problems” including traffic beyond the lunch hour.

Hilton has formed a Suggests Team of front line and other employees empowered to interact with consumers in real time.

Some Hilton properties view customer feedback via mobile as “terrifying”, according to an executive who spoke at the CEO/CMO Summit.

Hilton spends 6% of its marketing dollars on mobile, well above the norm.

An ad says that you can get Gogo Internet for the price of a coffee. Lies now?

Engagement, not ‪mobile bookings, is supposedly most important to ‪Priceline. Of course, one should lead to the other.

AT&T’s emerging devices head says to expect ‘fully independent’ wearables this year. Likely, but the carriers will push bundles hard.

Theme park visitors are ditching maps for apps? What's a map?

Google has reportedly banned this question in interviews: explain a database in three sentences to your 8-yr-old nephew? I know marketers who can't handle this one.

Steve Jobs supposedly recruited a hardware designer with this -- "Everything you've done in your life is sh*t”. The guy went to work for Jobs at Apple.

Wearables With Inaccurate Data Are Hardly A Fit

On the morning of Dec. 25, when the most strenuous thing I had done was to push the button on my computer, my new Fitbit Force showed that I had burned 861 calories.

I considered it a Christmas miracle.

Or a sham.

I figured that despite an exercise program that my doctor said put me in the top 1 percent of his patients, I owed it to myself, profession and gut to try on this “wearable” thing. You know the category that some claim will replace the smartphone.

Former New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue, now reporting for Yahoo, had put the Fitbit Force on the list or products he personally would buy. That clinched it for me when my wife asked what I wanted for a holiday present.

First came the so-called “unboxing”. Pogue had warned readers about the difficulty for some in getting the band to stay on the wrist. Absolutely, that was the case. It fell off several times in the first few days of use.

Setup was significantly harder than an elevator ride. The lauded Fitbit dongle for syncing is a tiny USB stick that could easily end up in the mouth of a child or puppy. Keeping it permanently in one computer isn’t practical for me since I work on three. So it could easily be here today, gone tomorrow.

I especially was interested in downloading the app on my iPhone and iPad and syncing on the fly. Fitbit’s app is not optimized for an iPad, but that was hardly my biggest complaint.

I created a personal profile, but the numbers immediately seemed inaccurate. Why would one buy a wearable if it could not produce real measurements?

Then, for more than two days, the band and iPhone app would not sync. I grabbed the shipping box in case I needed to ship the product back to Best Buy, but finally seemingly worked out the issues by going to the problem-solving page of fitbit.com, then rebooting and resetting several things.

I knew ahead of time that I would have to input my food consumed. That makes the Force anything but setup and go, but it was a price that I was willing to pay.

I took my saga to Twitter and folks I personally know and don’t know expressed surprise that I called the experience underwhelming.

“I've seen them on all sorts of people and just like working out it's about commitment and not entertainment,” one Tweet read.

Entertainment had never crossed my mind. Information for me to make better choices is all that I’m after.

We’ll see how it goes from here.

I do know that the wearables category is among the most hyped. And that smartphones aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so we can continue to run our mobile marketing programs and sell more stuff through the transformational device.

With CES up in a few days, expect the wearable category noise to get even louder and more crowded.

For those inclined, you can already buy something called Tikker, a wristwatch that claims to count down the seconds of your life. Of course, your time of death is estimated.

Just like my calories burned.

(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/01/01/wearables-with-inaccurate-data-are-hardly-a-fit/)

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Assessing the Wearable Market

Are wearables the next big thing or overhyped? I ask in light of the wording in a news report that said that Jawbone raised more than $100 million to “keep up with consumer demand”. My view is demand is overstating it.

Do you know anyone who formerly resisted buying an iPhone because of a perceived hassle with the password process? Neither do I.

It would be interesting to know how many iPhone users employ a password.  I bet it is well under 50 percent.

My takeaway on the new iPhones? I still fail to see how color and a relatively slightly lower iPhone price changes anything for U.S. marketers.

Siri is getting extra powers, like being able to search tweets for keywords. While I’m among the most active on Twitter, I’d settle for Siri delivering the basics – understanding our commands and returning answers to simple questions.

Those who predict the demise of text message marketing have no understanding of SMB needs and budgets. There is ample evidence that it works – and is growing in importance.

A tweet from a mobile conference last week- “More people will use more mobile services on Black Friday this year vs. last year”. You think?

Sign of the digital and mobile times - Bill de Blasio won the NYC mayoral primary without sending a single piece of snail mail.

Every day, over 125 years of total time is spend on Angry Games. My 84-year-old mother-in-law is a major contributor to this number.

40 percent of SMBs accept mobile payments with 16% more going that route in next 12 months, according to BIA Kelsey.

The 18-24 segment has soared 40 percent in time spent on their smartphones in just six months.

Wise words as usual from Google’s Jason Spero - "’Mobile first’ is like ‘organic’. Often claimed. Not always true.”