It’s a natural transition: smartphone, smart car, smart TV, and now a ‘smart bottle’.
Diageo and Thin Film Electronics ASA, a developer of printed electronics and smart systems, will reveal a prototype Johnnie Walker Blue Label smart bottle at the March 2-5 Mobile World Congress.
This bottle uses printed sensor tags featuring Thinfilm’s OpenSense technology, which can detect both the sealed and opened state of each bottle.
The tags and sensor info will allow Diageo to send personalized communications to consumers who read the tags with their smartphones. These messages can include promotional offers, cocktail recipes and other exclusive content.
Thinfilm’s proprietary and patent-pending technology makes use of smartphones’ Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities. The technology allows Diageo to track bottle movements across the supply chain, in-store and to the point of consumption. Tags remain readable even when the factory seal has been broken, providing an additional layer of security in protecting the authenticity of the product.
Unlike conventional QR codes, OpenSense tags can detect if a bottle is sealed or open with the simple tap of an NFC smartphone. To ensure authenticity, the tags are also encoded at the point of manufacture and cannot be copied or electrically modified.
