Alcohol has long been a way to augment reality, but now tech leaps in package design are letting consumers augment their realities before they even twist off the cap. As consumer goods brands strive for visibility, innovation and buzz, Norwegian tech company Thinfilm is becoming the go-to provider for making FMCG part of the Internet of Things.
ThinFilm’s breakthroughs allow tiny electronic chips to be printed on plastic surfaces, creating smart labels and smart packaging. Recent Thinfilm projects include Rémy Martin’s “connected” cognac bottles for the China market, Diageo’s Johnnie Walker smart bottle and safety-boosting temperature-sensitive labels.
What categories should be interested in smart packaging, in terms of return on ROI and not just for the “wow” factor?
Smart packaging is increasingly a focus for brands and agencies across the spectrum of consumer brands. At Thinfilm, we’ve worked with brands in categories including wine and spirits, craft beer, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), pharmaceuticals, health and beauty, tobacco, beverages and others to implement smart packaging solutions based on near field communication (NFC) technology. This is the same smartphone tap-based technology behind Apple Pay and Android Pay’s in-store systems, only in this case, people tap NFC smart product labels to instantly launch a digital experience right on their phone.
.@AstralTequila has released smart #bottles of its #tequila, which utilise near field communication (#NFC) technology to provide exclusive content to smartphone usershttps://t.co/wOBViNAnC2 #IoT #packaging pic.twitter.com/2hyPnY3fig
— FoodBev (@FoodBev) December 7, 2017
Across these markets, there are several common elements:
A need to sell physical products: Ultimately, consumer goods are physical items that are sold in traditional retail environments or via e-commerce and delivery to their destination.
A desire to meet consumers where they spend their time: That time is increasingly spent online. As the smartphone is an indispensable shopping tool, both in-store and online, brands are investing heavily in content and user experience (UX) optimization for digital channels. However, there is a gap between the physical products and the digital experience, and intelligent packaging is the way brands plan to bridge that gap. After all, what’s the point of creating engaging – and often expensive – digital content if it’s not as easy as possible for consumers to access it?
Love of the analytics potential of digital marketing: Because digital techniques do not automatically translate to the physical world of stores, products and in-home usage, brands seek return on investments (ROI) by creating an effortless link between physical products and their digital channels. The personalization and analytical capabilities of the digital space can then measure and optimize the consumer experience related to that physical product.
Ultimately, brands and agencies are looking for results, and recently published case studies show how smart packaging can deliver results on par with Google and superior to social networking. Barbadillo, a leading Spanish winemaker, launched a nationwide interactive wine packaging campaign featuring a smart paperboard collar placed over the neck of 126,000 bottles. With the touch of a phone, users were directed to a contest entry page that provided consumer value (a chance to win 1,000 euros) and brand value (first-party consumer information).
Australian wine brand 19 Crimes also produced talking labels using augmented reality. Will we start seeing more of this kind of packaging?
It’s important to understand the difference between the interactive trigger technology and the digital content or experience that is launched. Ultimately, augmented reality (AR) is an experience. It’s content. While the content needs to be engaging and ultimately sharable, it also needs to be easy to access. In the case of this AR bottle, the content is the animation and the audio is triggered once the user downloads the AR app, opens it and points at the bottle.
On the other hand, an interactive trigger technology makes it fast and easy for the user to access the precise content, whether it’s augmented reality, a curated audio playlist, a branded mobile app or a responsive mobile website. A good trigger technology will also incorporate unique identification at the item level, meaning that the cloud systems powering the ‘smart’ experience will know it’s that exact package, rather than just one of many.
This is particularly important in applications like contests, where only a few packages are winners, and in products where freshness and safety matter like cosmetics, food and beverage, because item level information can be connected to expiration dates, lab test results, and even safety recall information. As a result, particularly effective smart packaging implementations will combine an effective trigger with effective content that will invite repeated, inherently sharable experiences.
Luxury brands are leaping on smart packaging. Is the technology accessible and affordable for smaller brands?
“Smart Packaging” is a broad term, and the diversity of solutions within the smart packaging space means that there is something for everyone. Very few CPG brands are able to add a dollar or more to their packaging bill of materials across their portfolio of brands, but there are absolutely smart packaging options for brands without big budgets.
In those cases, smaller brands need to look for solutions with the following three characteristics:
1. They leverage the power and affordability of the cloud instead of building the complexity into the packaging itself.
2. They integrate hardware and cloud software to avoid the cost and complexity of assembling a solution from scratch.
3. They take advantage of the processing power and displays built into the smartphones that are already in the hands of today’s shoppers.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve encountered implanting smart labels and packages?
In the early days of smart packaging, we quickly realized that brands—big and small—needed more than just a smart adhesive label. Even though most big brands have in-house agency-based digital expertise, they were not in a position to build their own cloud platform in a timely, cost effective manner.
As a result, we moved beyond simple hardware to focus on providing solutions, by combining smart labels and other smart packaging with cloud-based software that simplified management of smart packages, streamlined configuration of cloud-based digital marketing campaigns and facilitated analysis of campaign results. This improved our clients’ time to market and enhanced visibility into ongoing campaigns while streamlining post-campaign analysis.
Where is the bleeding edge of smart package design right now? What is impressing you?
Manufacturers are certainly experimenting with electronic packaging, including on-package lights and LEDs, but this is not exactly smart packaging. The most impressive smart packaging takes advantage of the almost limitless potential of the cloud to create a personalized, optimized experience.
When it comes to driving product sales and revenue, an early validation of demand for a “retail Internet of Things” that links the physical to the digital is the Amazon Dash Button, which allows a consumer to easily reorder an item with the press of a single button. While the Dash Button is not itself smart packaging, it’s logical to imagine smart packaging, especially NFC-enabled smart packaging, that absorbs the Dash Button into each and every box, bottle and container.
Instead of looking for the lone reorder button, perhaps hiding in the back of a drawer or cabinet, the consumer simply touches their phone to the empty NFC smart bottle in their hand to launch the instant reorder experience. This trend toward ubiquity is particularly important, because brands that want to enhance the ongoing value of their product can move beyond initial test and learn deployments toward a sustained intelligent packaging implementation where the physical-to-digital link is as core to the product concept as the physical item itself.
Interested in taking advantage of an #Omnichannel #MarketingStrategy? Step One: Download the NFC #MobileMarketing @ForDummies #eBook https://t.co/EHlX74gHZj via @nfcforum
— Thinfilm (@ThinfilmMemory) December 6, 2017
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