As from 13 December 2014 a new EU Regulation 1169/2011 will come into effect. It considerably changes legislation on food labelling. Failure to comply with the new labelling requirements could lead to expensive product recalls and legal claims. Little wonder that some organisations have already started to prepare ground for a new directive, making use of available technologies. The bottom line is to guarantee better consistency of product information available to consumers on-shelf and on-line.

One such example is a joint initiative between a not-for-profit organisation GS1 UK and Brandbank. The leading digital content management firm closed a deal with GS1 UK in August this year. Both entities agreed to work in a partnership to provide the UK retail, food and drink manufacturing, e-tail and food service industries with a single trusted source of product information based on global data standards.

Informed Choice for Consumers, 100 Percent Compliance for Firms

The goal of cooperation between GS1 UK and a digital content provider like Brandbank is to develop a comprehensive suite of solutions that will facilitate the creation and distribution of high quality product data, rich content and images for brand owners, their customers and mobile app providers. The solutions will provide industry with greater consistency between products on shelf and on-line, supported by an efficient process for managing product information between trading partners and presenting it to the consumer via a range of digital channels. Designed to ensure that consumers can make informed decisions about the food they buy, both in store and online, with full access to information such as nutritional value, ingredients, etc. the forthcoming new legislation is one of the drivers of this collaboration. GS1 UK has over 27,000 members. The organisation's goal is to ensure full compliance with the new law across GS1 UK’s aprox. 8,000 members who sell food and drink either on-line or via distance selling.

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Carlsberg UK is one of the firms, which were quick to grasp the necessity to aggregate essential product imagery and e-commerce information for retailers. The fourth largest brewer in UK also joined forces with Brandbank in order to enable the online shopper to make an informed buying decision and find the right product. With almost 90 brands in the UK and multi-channel sales, the firm hired the digital content provider to create content and then pull it together into one central place. This way the brewer can automatically syndicate the content to all retailers. Storing the content in one central place means that Carlsberg UK can deploy it for many different business purposes – both to distribute to e-commerce retailers and to share with internal Carlsberg UK teams and agencies. Importantly, Brandbank enables Carlsberg UK to easily supply its major retailer customers with timely changes and updates. The firm typically changes about 50 percent of its product packaging in any one year. A digital content management services should also include professional product photography as standard, with images retouched so they are available in resolutions and formats specified by the firm. It seems more cost-effective to use such service than any comparable alternative, like contracting a photographer on a product-by-product basis.

Just spin it

In the case of Brandbank-Carlsberg UK partnership, the range of advanced product imagery was also generated, later used not just for e-commerce, but also for marketing and space planning. Collaboration between both companies on 360-degree spin product imagery made Carlsberg UK one of the first companies within the food and drinks sector to look at the potential benefits of this solution. If appropriately designed, both spin imagery and 3D visualizations can be used as sources of legally required information on a product, available both in-store and online. As already mentioned, the new regulation states that all mandatory food information shall be clearly legible in a conspicuous place and in no way hidden by any other material. Such solutions as Esko's package design tool Studio enable the designer to see a 3D image of the package before it moves on to production. It eliminates the need to make an expensive live mock up, and helps the designer – and the legal team – to assess if the package is compliant. 3D or spin 360 representations of online products provide a consumer with all required product information and help the retailer achieve compliance with a new law. Hardly a novelty, 3D product pictures represent a great marketing and sales tool that adds a new dimension to the firm's product catalog. According to marketing specialists, 360 degree view for products is considered one of the most effective method to promote products in online stores. They allow visitors and potential customers to rotate products, examine them in detail and make informed decisions. The results of one of the surveys proved that customer experience was improved by 40 percent when 360 product images were present in an e-commerce shop. Also, the probability of purchase increased by 45 percent and there was a 50 percent reduction in returned goods because of their better feature communication.

Sources: http://www.gs1uk.org; http://www.brandbank.com; http://www.3drev.com/; http://www.esko.com Photo: http://www.nutritionandwellbeing.co.uk/