What will Google Glass bring to advertising?

Guest blogger:

Frederico Roberto works and blogs for www.inferno-group.com.

A few months ago I remember  Google Glass being mentioned in the news on a daily basis so what has happened to it and all of the hype it generated? The world of marketing stood up and took note of the search engine’s latest breakthrough invention but has it really done much to shape up the sector? I believe not but yet this is a great post from Frederico Roberto on its capabilities of doing so.

What will Google Glass bring to advertising? A lot! Plain simply, we’re on a brink of something that could definitely change most of the entertainment industries, not only advertising. And in my opinion, it will do so with a bang, since we’re basically about to witness a shift from usable technology to wearable technology. Or, in other words, a shift from active technology to passive technology.

And for advertising for instance, that means that brands won’t have to rely on people putting a smartphone or a tablet in between of something so the impact can take place. Sure, we still have to wear them and use the magic words: “Ok, glass….”, but we’re well on our way to make brands’ interaction with people a lot more fun, a lot more engaging and, most of all, a lot more relevant.

It will change the way we shop. Imagine that you’re on a supermarket, Google Glass set up and ready to use, you pick up a box of cereals and you access the device for a ton of information, games, ads, a million ways to make you decide for that product rather than any other.

It will change the way we dress. Women will have to pull their hair behind to use it; imagine the fashion accessories, the hair styles, the clothing design that will have to match the need of no hair in a woman’s (or man’s) right side of the head.

It will change the way we act. People will get so distracted, they’ll miss their exiting bus stop (this actually already happened to some of the Google Explorers that tried the product), thus the need for some sort of alarms or louder bus announcements.

It will change the way we consume entertainment. The adult industry (15% of all of the internet) will massively use it – it already started to do so – powering it as it did to the VHS industry, the CD-Rom and the Internet. The gaming industry will use it for a proper and ultimate integration with the real world. The movie industry will adapt and start to create shorter content for it. Known platforms such as YouTube (part of Google) and Facebook will redefine their UI for a better and smoother performance.

And advertising…well, it will just become more personal. And if it becomes more personal, there are7 billion reasons in the world for Google Glass to succeed.

Google Glass won’t be alone in this wearable technology new trend. We’ve heard of the upcoming-patented iWatch from Apple and Samsung, Nokia, and several other tech giants won’t stay behind. Not to mention all of the similar products from more affordable brands.

Still, I would like you to think a little bit on the implications that a device such as this, which we know so much by now (the opposite to the usual Apple products, surrounded with so much secrecy), will have on your brand, on your creativity, on your life. And seeing a pattern here, in which every device is influenced by the previous one (smartphones tried to incorporate years of Windows usability and UI, the same way the Google Glass is replicating how we use smartphones right now), what will the next big thing, after the Glass, be?

Are we ready to completely put ourselves out in the open like this? And to answer to my title question: are we, advertisers, ready for the gargantuan responsibility that comes with interfering people’s lives this much?

This post was originally published on the Inferno Group Blog on 25 July.