Back in 1999 a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader enabled a user to open a link to a URL by scanning a barcode. The CueCat was clearly advanced for its time, but the fact that the Digital Convergence Corporation is now defunct only goes to show that this early attempt at meshing technology with our everyday interactions was perhaps too advanced of consumer expectations.

Now, 18 years on, and consumers are more than comfortable with all things digital, and very much attuned to the concept of connected products. These no longer sound like outlandish ideas inspired by sci-fi movies. Neither do they centre around seemingly out-of-reach home appliances as they once did.

As we increasingly witness the spread of every day items becoming digitised, it is vital to shift the emphasis from tackling the ‘here-and-now’ challenges they throw up, to focus on what the future is going to look like from this digitised perspective, and the opportunities they present brewers and brand builders.

It was only four years ago that Heineken took a stab at merging the digital and physical worlds and produced the first ‘smart beer bottle’. Using micro sensors and wireless networking technology to sense motion and illuminate in response, this bottle could be programmed to ‘listen’ to music and detect different kinds of motion, responding accordingly via responsive lighting in time with the beat and in keeping with the vibe and atmosphere in a bar. At the time this seemed quite extraordinary but it was just a prototype, and a costly one which never made it to market.

Grolsch too took to exploring virtual worlds. In 2014 they unveiled a beer bottle that contained next-generation Bluetooth beacon technology. This effectively allowed consumers to access free movies via the digitally enhanced bottles. When a consumer opened a bottle the beacon in the cap connected to the shoppers’ previously registered smartphone and enabled them to access a movie of their choice by tapping the bottle with their device.

Certainly designing an immersive experience is increasingly easy to do thanks to all the digital tools marketers and designers now have at their disposal. We have the technology to turn everyday items into digitised, identifiable, data-generators that go way beyond entertaining the consumer.

But are we really making the most of all this technology? Are we truly looking in depth at each touchpoint to ensure a beer bottle’s entire journey from concept to recycling is optimised? And are marketers set up to make the most of the wealth of data brands can potentially gather? The short answer to this is, not yet. The impact of digitalisation is so powerful that most marketers and brand designers are only just grasping the need to take a more holistic approach. Our focus no longer should purely be on the consumer’s experience of a bottle – from the moment they connect with it on shelf to when they recycle it – but right back to the beginning as a bottle can potentially start gathering valuable data from the moment it leaves the brewery.

Knowing what to know

This data can not only inform brewers and later retailers, it can potentially be used as marketing material. This is particularly the case for specialist beers where the entire lifecycle of beer production could be turned into a narrative. Certainly a beer bottle can now have its temperature monitored,  its entire journey to the shelf tracked and it can offer rapid and effective cashier scanning. If it is a premium brand that suffers from counterfeiting across markets it could even be tracked for proof of origin. A rare beer could even benefit from theft or fraud prevention via these digital identification techniques! But, more to the point,  the fact that it can now tell its own life story is a powerful marketing tool.

The key is to define what we want to know, in other words, what information we want the bottle to gather along its journey. Then we need to establish how best to manage this data to ensure the experience is not just smooth and efficient but engaging and relevant. Creating awareness is one thing, offering an experience that consumers want to share and repeat is key.

Digitally enabled packaging holds product identification data that can be updated in real time throughout the supply chain and once it is with the consumer. As a bottle makes its way through the distribution chain, each stop can be reflected in the data. It can also serve as a launch point for communication between brands and consumers via their smartphones.

Getting to know you

This of course is the most exciting part, when it reaches the consumer – that interaction is what gets marketers and designers really excited. Establishing how consumers best interact with a beer brand and how to apply the most relevant marketing campaigns around this requires deep diving into how consumers interact with this specific product.

As technology seamlessly soups-up consumers’ view of the real world with an overlay of digital content, beer can now broadcast its own advertising, show a 3D version of the bottle contents in action, or take the consumer straight to an entertaining microsite or app, all with a quick swipe of the smartphone.

Relevance over entertainment

From a beer brand’s perspective, once the consumer brings the bottle home and scans it to reveal this additional information, they have valuable data they can tap in to. This ethically sourced data belongs to the brand owner and opens up a whole new potential channel for engaging with consumers. However, if it is not used to make the product more relevant and personalised it risks missing vital opportunities to truly engage on an emotional level.

As such the focus should be less on turning bottles into a multi-media experience and much more on being targeted and relevant. We are still some way off beer packs understanding who we are and our motivations by themselves. But when combined with barcode technology and store card data, with access to our product history, our beer brands could begin to become trusted lifestyle advisors in possession of more knowledge about who we are than we realise.

Gimmick or authentic?

Many of the digital extensions we are currently seeing on packs and bottles  are still being created as entertaining promotions – beer marketers need to ask themselves whether they are creating gimmicks or delivering real value to the consumer.

Whilst manufacturers now have a multitude of reasons to wrap their products in brand stories that can come to life at the swipe of a smart phone, the benefits need to be analysed and amplified at each touch point otherwise a pack can offer efficient cashier scanning and fraud prevention, yet disappoint on consumer delivery or vice versa.

Now that the digital innovation dust has started to settle, we should start seeing a host of on-pack digital campaigns that genuinely build engagement, dialogue, extra value and loyalty between consumers and brands.

Estrella’s recent marketing campaign focused on an aspirational millennial Mediterranean lifestyle, beautifully capturing brand essence in a short arts film, (for anyone that was motivated enough to search for it). In future, smartphones will have the capacity to know when a consumer is popping the cap on a chilled bottle, and the marketing message will play automatically.

Shifting from gimmick to game-changer will ensure smart packaging really delivers on the innovation opportunities it promises.