DISCUSSION
Can calls for food transparency be answered digitally?
Written by RetailWire Staff
Source: Grocery Manufacturers Association
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
With consumers demanding more transparency, the SmartLabel initiative, launched in late 2015 by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), is gaining momentum.
SmartLabels provide information via apps and QR codes on packages that is found on the product’s physical labels, such as nutrition facts and ingredients. The initiative also provides extra information such as third-party certifications for ingredient standards, product advisories and use instructions as well as links to brand information.
With leaders such as Unilever and Mondelez showing the way, 26 companies have begun fielding digital SmartLabels on packages of nearly 190 of their brands as constituted by nearly 5,150 products, according to GMA.
The services of Label Insight, the initiative’s technology provider, offer glimpses of where SmartLabel is evolving. For its clients, Label Insight takes the information contained on the physical package of the product and transforms it into a data set of facts about the SKU that may be 10 times larger. This information includes plain-language definitions of 250,000 CPG ingredients, for instance.
“If you take an ingredient like tartrazine, it doesn’t mean much to the average consumer, and it doesn’t mean much on a package or even a SmartLabel page,” Patrick Moorhead, chief marketing officer of Label Insight, told CPGmatters. “But we’ve built out our definitions for tartrazine that say what it is, what it is made of, what are its purposes in a product, what are some other ways it can be referenced as an ingredient — it’s a yellow coloring agent. And our clients are able to use that information to adapt the way their SmartLabel page gets executed.”
Label Insight also helps clients such as Unilever “matrix” all the information on a package to “uncover implicit things about products” that brands may want to address. For instance, frozen waffles might include high-fructose corn syrup, which implies that the product should provide an allergen and sulfites warning.
SmartLabels aren’t yet being promoted in stores, though Mondelez is partnering with other brand activation to drive awareness during in-store sampling events. GMA predicts more than 80 percent of CPG products will be using SmartLabel by 2021.