In February 2019, LOUIS XIII cognac will step into the future by integrating NFC technology into its ‘Smart Decanter’ to provide clients a seamless access to an exclusive world of privileges. Each decanter will directly connect clients to the LOUIS XIII Society, a private club where members can enjoy exclusive content, unique experiences and personalised services through their smartphones.

After removing the seal, clients will simply have to tap & scan their NFC-enabled smartphones on the cork stopper to access the LOUIS XIII Society landing page to create or log into their account. The decanter number will then be automatically registered.

NFC enables simple, rapid, intuitive and secure communication between two electronic objects. A mature and robust technology which has been growing in the past 20 years being used mainly by bank cards, biometric passports and travel tickets – until now. Today, with the introduction of contactless payment, connected wearables and the Internet of Things, NFC technology is reinventing the way we experience life.

Thanks to this small NFC chip, LOUIS XIII clients will get facilitated access to all the advantages of the LOUIS XIII Society. This private club offers bespoke services such as customised decanter engraving, pre-releases of limited editions, contact with a LOUIS XIII Personal Advisor for private tastings and ultimate experiences, and an invitation to network with LOUIS XIII Cognac connoisseurs registered all over the world. In addition, the LOUIS XIII Smart Decanter will bring added services to clients allowing them to customise gifting messages that will appear when recipients scan their decanter.

“Every LOUIS XIII decanter will feature this smart solution worldwide. At LOUIS XIII, we place clients at the very heart of everything we do, striving to offer them always the best experiences,” said Ludovic du Plessis, LOUIS XIII Global Executive Director. “This innovation will be launched globally starting February 2019 and will be deployed all over the world the following months.”

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Marc Rigby of MRM looks at the relevance of Promotional Marketing to today’s marketing industry

Part of my misspent youth was dedicated to undertaking a degree in Marketing. How shiny and new it all felt back then in the 1980s, with brand spend all hovering above and below some imaginary line.

I chose below the line. Cash, holidays and cars. Neck labels, fix-a-forms and scratch panels. Free flights, treasure hunts and soft toy Labradors. Activity so impactful in its imagination and creativity that sometimes it didn’t even need a press release to make the national news.

Fast forward 18 years into the new millennium and the chance to assess where the trends of integration, omnichannel and the like have taken the old trouper that is Promotional Marketing. And no better place to do that than at the 2018 IPM awards, particularly as MRM was a sponsor this year.

But first, some context. To paraphrase Lord Black of Brentwood in his excellent introductory speech at the Awards, “I have never known such a time of change and flux.”

An economy showing marginal growth with Brexit concerns and growing inflationary pressures, dictatorial government legislation and public health concerns.

After a decade of dominant price promotion activity there is evidence of the usurping impact that EDLP pricing is having in the shape of the sales strategies of German retailers Aldi and Lidl.

And look at the fact that retailers such as Asda, Ikea, Next et al chose to step away from the bun fight that is Black Friday. It is low prices not short term price offers that is winning the promotional day.

So, can added value promotions still have a role to play in building the all-too-important brand equity?

Promotional Marketing as a marketing multiplier

What this year’s entrants consistently demonstrated is that their campaigns defined promotion as less about a proven collection of techniques to drive sales and more about the role Promotional Marketing can play when it has the chance to contribute to the marketing multiplier effect that boosts a campaign’s impact and how its customers really begin to engage with it.

What do I mean by that last statement? That campaigns truly reach another level when a great idea is founded in a brand truth and delivered to a consumer as a total brand experience.

Take the immense piece of work that is Lucozade Energy and TBK Group’s ‘Unstoppable Bottle’ – a multi award winner at the 2018 IPM Awards (see the picture above). Product packaging uniquely adapted to the activity. Check. Product sampling. Check. Relevance of activity to brand proposition. Check. Amplification of activity with advertising and social media. Check. Tangible motivating reward. Check. Add the fact that the activation was the first of its kind and it was delivered flawlessly achieving outstanding results, and you have a deserved winner. And, in striking a sensory, emotional, relevant and behavioural chord with the audience, it truly delivered a brand experience.

Clearly, promotional success need not be as reliant on retail presence as it once was. Packaging still remains a primary medium to communicate through, even if the power of the retailer’s own brand limits the opportunities to stand out in store. Getting listings and facings is a hard and often expensive challenge for any underperforming brand. Today’s marketer has a number of channels to drive communication of a promotion. Digital activity can undoubtedly help to build your story and promote the activity to a targeted audience. Hell, it even serves as an ideal place to store your terms and conditions. But it can also very quickly undermine your best efforts if your activity doesn’t pass the scrutiny of your consumers.

Not that this was a problem for another award winner. Nestlé KitKat and ZEAL Creative’s personalised KitKat packs proved how the public’s appetite for personalisation can be integrated into an established brand’s packaging.

So I hope I am not alone in concluding from this year’s crop of winners that, within the armoury of marketers, Promotional Marketing remains a trusted and effective weapon. And whilst the idea at the heart of any marketing campaign should be embedded in the brand proposition, creativity can only truly thrive with the support and expertise of practitioners who understand the importance of planning, insight and how best to manipulate the Promotional tools; not to merely drive sales but also deliver brand experiences that challenge and engage the audiences they seek to reach.

At MRM, we like to think we are defined by our services but measured by our results.  That is a statement that should be a maxim for our whole industry.

Marc Rigby is Managing Director of Multi Resource Marketing Ltd (MRM), a marketing services agency celebrating its 25^th anniversary this summer. MRM is a sponsor of the IPM Awards 2018.

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El Jimador, a leading premium tequila brand owned by US drinks giant Brown-Forman, is launching a ‘smart’ bottle and connected drinks coaster, using technology developed by Norwegian NFC experts, Thinfilm.

The six-figure deal is a key element of el Jimador’s omni-channel ‘Soccer Moments’ campaign, and is being heralded as the biggest ever largest NFC-related activation for a tequila brand. El Jimador is the sponsor of the Mexican National Soccer team’s 2018 US tour.

In collaboration with Thinfilm, el Jimador has incorporated NFC tags in custom bottle-neckers and branded coasters. When tapped with a smartphone in-store, at home, or on the go, el Jimador customers can instantly submit their favorite soccer story for a chance to win $25,000, custom jerseys, and other prizes. The NFC tags fully integrate with Thinfilm’s CNECT Cloud Platform and enable el Jimador marketers to view real-time tapping activity, analyze campaign performance, and uncover actionable insights.

The connected el Jimador bottles and coasters are being distributed through select retail outlets, bars, and restaurants across the United States.

Ed Carias, Senior Brand Manager for el Jimador tequila at Brown-Forman says: “Our Soccer Moments campaign is connecting us with consumers who are both fans of soccer and fans of the el Jimador brand. By leveraging the smartphone that most of us carry today, Thinfilm’s NFC solution significantly extends our ability to establish those connections, build lasting consumer relationships, and drive the success of the el Jimador brand.”

Following its Soccer Moments promotion, el Jimador plans to use Thinfilm’s NFC mobile marketing solution in a “Day of the Dead” campaign this coming October.

“It has become increasingly common for leading brands like el Jimador to position NFC as a key enabler within major omnichannel marketing initiatives,” said Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm. “The Soccer Moments campaign is a perfect example.”

Thin Film Electronics ASA is a publicly listed company in Norway with global headquarters in Oslo, Norway; US headquarters in San Jose, California; and offices in Linköping, Sweden; San Francisco; London; Hamburg; Singapore; and Shanghai. Its Thinfilm solutions use NFC to connect FMCG products to the Internet of Things.

El Jimador is a premium 100% blue agave tequila made by Mexican distillery Tequila Herradura, founded in 1870. In 2007, the company was bought by Brown-Forman for $776 million. Over the past 10 years, Brown-Forman, which owns other alcohol brands including Jack Daniel’s, Southern Comfort and Finlandia Vodka, has been expanding international distribution for el Jimador and it is now sold in 136 countries, compared with the 56 countries at the time of the acquisition.

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New packaging technology is helping promotional marketers create even greater impact on the way people shop, says Chris Baldwin from Sodexo. PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Technology is moving faster than ever with new ways to find, buy and redeem products popping up every day.

Not to state the obvious, but that makes technology more important than ever in driving a successful campaign — and brands who get on board with innovation can reap the benefits in terms of appeal and functionality. Great tech should make life easier, right?

Is there anything new about packaging technology?

According to the Savvy Cynics 2016 Consumer Promotions Survey Report, nearly 70% of people either look for, or are attracted by, promotional messages on product.

Clearly, on-pack promotions have traditionally played a huge role in promotional campaigns but the whole industry is now changing dramatically and with it come new packaging opportunities.

Retailers can tap into innovative packaging ideas, overcoming issues around space, design, and manufacturing to reach more customers and make an impact.

Augmented Reality – looking forwards, and up, and down….

A ‘newish’ way to take your conversation with customers to the next level is with Augmented Reality (AR). With AR, brands can boost an offer with loads of extra, fun content. Consumers simply use a zapcode to access more info from games – and competitions too.

Casper Thykier, co-founder of AR specialists Zappar, is a leader in AR technology. He says: “If you get the three Cs right, you get engagement and dwell time.”

In this case, the three Cs are:

• Context
• Call to Action
• Content

Thykier adds: “AR packaging is great for increasing frequency with your product and giving you rich data analytics, turning your physical products into a living, breathing multimedia channel you control.”

Some of the best examples in recent years include inspiration from traditional consumer promotions, fused with technology to appeal to the discerning 21st century shopper.

In 2011 Heinz used technology created by Zappar’s rival, Blippar, to grant access to a Heinz recipe book (which when you think about it is a surprisingly traditional offering.) By downloading the app and holding it up to a Heinz ketchup bottle, shoppers could view the recipes which appeared on pages as if they were on the bottle itself. Heinz used this to drive people to its Facebook page to access more content.

NFC Keeping in touch with your Customers

Near Field Communication or NFC for short is also allowing consumers to interact with brand packaging. By tapping their smartphones on the labels the tags transfer data between devices wirelessly and without data or internet required.

Potential brand applications are numerous, such as advertising, shopper activation and engagement and loyalty schemes.

Malibu recently used NFC technology to great effect as part of their #BecauseSummer campaign in September 2016. They encouraged consumers to tap the image of a Malibu sunset on select bottles, to gain access to exlusive content, as well as being entered into prize draws.

Let’s get personal…

Personalised experiences with brands have become easier than ever thanks in part to a rise in digital printing.

Brands such as Marmite, Coca Cola, Nutella and Vaseline have seized the opportunity to create fully bespoke personalisation for consumers and considering that the worth of the digital print for packaging market was valued at £10.5bn in 2015 and is expected to grow annually by 13.6% according to a study by Smithers Pira, I think we can agree this trend is set to explode in popularity.

Coca Cola’s ‘Share-A-Coke’ campaign which featured 100,000 of the most popular names printed on bottle labels around the world contributed to a 6.8% increase in Coca Cola’s global Facebook community, as well as boosting their index scores from 9.6 to 12.4 on the first day of the campaign alone.

So has digital printing reached its tipping point?

With so much potential in this approach to packaging, not to mention digital printing’s economic and speed to market advantages, it’s a proven way to engage with customers whilst remaining very cost effective, so it seems like a no-brainer to continue going forward.

As technology continues to advance and experiences with AR, NFC and iBeacon become more seamless, Global brands have an exciting opportunity to exploit ‘new-age packaging’ to create a new kind of customer experience that has a holistic focus on the creation of ‘marketing moments.’

Those brands able to find the right balance of brief, slick and seamless product interactions with their audience, will reap the most reward-  building trust, relationships and loyalty over time in the most fun way possible.

Chris Baldwin is Director of Consumer Programs at Sodexo. The Sodexo family, which includes the Promorati brands Protravel, Filmology, Fotorama and Entice, is Headline Sponsor of The IPM Awards 2017.

Fotorama, part of the Sodexo family has published a new eBook, How new technology is driving the promotional marketing industry, taking a closer look at the digital revolution and how it can help marketers influence shoppers.

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Malibu, the world’s no.1 coconut flavoured rum, has launched Internet of Things enabled bottles into Tesco in the UK on an exclusive basis. Consumers with smartphones just have to tap the image of a ‘Malibu sunset’ on the bottles to access content and be able to enter prize draws instantly.

The 40,000 ‘connected’ Malibu bottles use Near Field Communications (NFC) chips, similar to the ones found in Transport for London’s Oyster cards and many credit and debit cards. Malibu points out that by using NFC chips, there is no need for consumers to download an app to their phone.

The campaign is part of the worldwide Malibu #Becausesummer campaign.

Pernod Ricard UK, which owns and markets Malibu, says that its exclusive research has revealed a growing trend in consumer demand for “experiences not products, whereby consumers are no longer buying products and services – they are buying experiences delivered via the products and services. By changing the dynamics and challenging traditional views, brands can significantly increase their engagement with new and existing consumers and, the more innovative the approach, the more chance of reaching a new audience. Malibu has responded to this consumer need by introducing the ‘connected’ bottles technology.”

The campaign has been developed through an on-going partnership between Malibu and creative agency SharpEnd, and follows work undertaken at The Absolut Company’s innovation lab in Stockholm, where Absolut and Malibu collaborated on a ‘connected’ bottles showcase. The project has now led to the very first pilot of this kind in the UK.

Embracing the technology, Malibu will be turning each bottle into a direct, digital touchpoint for consumers. ‘Tapping’ the iconic sunset logo on the Malibu bottle will open up a world of five amazing digital #Becausesummer experiences that consumers can access through their mobile browser, including:

• Instant-win competition – tap to win UE Boom speakers
• User-generated-content competition – consumers are encouraged to upload a summer snap. Google’s Cloud Vision API will then use its automated machine learning capabilities to recognise the content of the image and classify it into a theme (e.g. BBQ, Festival, Beach). Once classified, a personalised, branded image is sent back to the consumer.  They are then entered into a prize draw to win a holiday to Barbados (7 nights all-inclusive)
• Bartender in a bottle – drinks recipes
• Bar locator – uses the consumer’s geo-location to find the nearest Malibu bar and alfresco drinking spots if the weather is good
• Playlist – connects to Malibu Play on digital audio streaming platform Mixcloud for playlists from Groove Armada, Marvin Humes, Clean Bandit and more.

There is an age-gate to access prizes and content, only users aged 18+ can access these experiences.

Jo Alexander, Malibu Marketing Manager at Pernod Ricard UK, comments: “This is a huge step into an exciting future for the alcohol sector, and part of our on-going push for Malibu in the digital space. We couldn’t be more excited that Malibu is leading the way in brand innovation by bringing this advanced technology to the forefront of the industry. This concept is consistent with our ‘Because Summer’ wider campaign as we wanted to ensure that our target audience of young-adult fun starters could get the most out of summer – and our ‘connected’ bottles do just that with a number of exclusive prizes on offer at the tap of a bottle. As a first for Malibu, we know that this will be a huge hit with consumers and we can’t wait to see their reactions. This is just the beginning for this exciting new technology.”

Cameron Worth, Founder of SharpEnd, comments: “Bottles are now media platforms, able to drive localised content that is defined by the market that sells the product and maintains the consumer relationship. Once the bottle becomes a media platform there are so many different things that can be delivered that are beneficial to shoppers. This provides an entirely new way to communicate with them and brings Malibu directly in front of its target audience, presenting the opportunity to drive brand loyalty through service delivery.”

Tomas Roope, Creative Lead, ZOO Google Creative Services EMEA, adds: “We are hugely excited about being part of bringing such a complex suite of technologies together, to build such a simple, user friendly bridge between packaging, mobile and shoppers’ passion for self-expression. For us this is a really intriguing exploration of something that only a few years ago would have been prohibitively complex technically. For us this really feels right on the edge of user retail innovation.”

The ‘connected’ bottles will be in-store from the beginning of September; all bottles will have an accompanying neck-tag to provide the consumer with a clear explanation of the technology.

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Arc, the shopper marketing and activation agency which is part of marketing services group Leo Burnett, has signed an exclusive partnership with Thin Film Electronics ASA, a global leader in printed electronics and smart systems.

The two companies will collaborate to deliver Thinfilm’s NFC OpenSense technology to Arc and Leo Burnett clients across a variety of product categories.

NFC OpenSense tags are thin, flexible labels that adhere to products and can be activated with the tap of an NFC-enabled smartphone. Each tag is uniquely identifiable and can detect both a product’s “factory sealed” and “opened” states. Once tapped, the tag wirelessly communicates with a smartphone, instantly delivering contextual brand content at shelf or when using the product at home.

Thinfilm’s products can be used to create ‘smart packaging’ – the company has just announced at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona that leading Spanish winemaker Barbadillo has launched a rare sherry in “smart bottles” protected by Thinfilm’s NFC-based authentication technology (see image). The NFC OpenSense tags incorporated into each bottle are specifically designed to beat counterfeiters, prevent unauthorized refills, and facilitate product authentication.

Thinfilm and Leo Burnett/Arc teams will work side-by-side, ensuring the technology is accessible to brands and creating custom NFC OpenSense solutions for agency clients. In addition, the combined team will help further shape the technology to ensure the technology is more attractive and accessible to brands.

Nick Jones, EVP, Innovation & Growth at Arc/Leo Burnett, says: “Technology affords people the opportunity to plan, shop, and buy on their own terms anytime and anywhere, resulting in highly sophisticated shoppers and a highly competitive marketplace. Thinfilm’s NFC OpenSense technology is a game changer. It allows brands to connect with shoppers beyond the point-of-sale, delivering multiple messages throughout a product’s lifetime.”

In June 2015, Thinfilm highlighted its NFC OpenSense technology at Leo Burnett/Arc’s fifth annual FutureShop showcase in Chicago. Leo Burnett/Arc clients and staff learned firsthand how next-generation, mobile-centric retail marketing technologies can change the way brands communicate and the way consumers make purchase decisions.

Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm, adds: “Thinfilm is very excited to partner with a global leader and innovator in the field of digital communication and shopper marketing. We look forward to working closely with the team at Leo Burnett/Arc to help provide the agency’s clients with solutions that strengthen consumer relationships and ultimately, grow their businesses.”

Thinfilm was the first company to commercialize printed, rewritable memory and is creating printed systems that include memory, sensing, display, and wireless communication, all at a low cost.

Thinfilm’s roadmap integrates technology from a strong and growing ecosystem of partners to enable the ‘Internet of Everything’ by bringing intelligence to disposable goods.

Thin Film Electronics ASA is a publicly listed Norwegian company with headquarters in Oslo, Norway; product development and production in Linköping, Sweden; product development, production, and business development in San Jose, California, USA; and sales offices in the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Arc is the Intelligent Activation Agency within Leo Burnett Worldwide. Headquartered in Chicago, Arc provides brands with innovative, insightful and imaginative creative solutions rooted in understanding people and behaviour through the lens of a shopper. As part of one of the world’s largest agency networks, Arc has 26 offices in 22 countries with more than 1,000 employees.

Arc works with some of the world’s most valued brands including Coca-Cola, Fiat, Adidas, Samsung, Microsoft, McDonald’s and P&G.

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