Brand owners are always looking for ways to connect with their customers. These techniques have become more sophisticated, and the coupons have given way to loyalty cards. Thanks to near field communication (NFC), there is more yet in store.

Diageo is one company looking to connect with their customers. A global leader in alcoholic beverages, Diageo’s brands include whiskeys (Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal and J&B, among others); vodkas (Smirnoff, Cîroc and Ketel One); as well as Captain Morgan rum, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray gin and Guinness.

To find new approaches, Diageo formed Diageo Technology Ventures (DTV) in September 2014. DTV is tasked with finding new opportunities for future growth by working with emerging technology companies.

DTV’s first project is a collaboration with Thin Film Electronics (Thinfilm) on a “smart bottle” of Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch. The bottle features printed sensor tags utilizing Thinfilm’s OpenSense technology.

OpenSense has unique capabilities. It can track the bottle through the supply chain. It can detect the sealed and opened state of each bottle. If the customer reads the tag with his or her smartphone, the tags and the sensor will allow Diageo to send personalized communications to them, such as  targeted marketing messages, promotional offers, cocktail recipes and other content. The bottle was showcased at both Mobile World Congress 2015 and LOPEC 2015.

“Until recently, a bottle has been a container for liquid,” Venky Balakrishnan, global VP of digital innovation at Diageo, told USA Today recently. “We see the possibility for the bottle to do something much more before, during and after purchase.     

“Having sensors on the bottle, combined with people being in specific locations, will allow us to offer to consumers deals unique to that time and place,” Balakrishnan added during a separate interview with CNBC.

“Mobile technology is changing the way we live, and as a consumer brands company, we want to embrace its power to deliver amazing new consumer experiences in the future,” added Helen Michels, global innovation director, futures team at Diageo. “We constantly experiment with the latest cutting edge technologies to enrich and enhance the experiences delivered by our iconic brands.

Thinfilm CEO Davor Sutija noted that consumers want and expect brands to deliver custom mobile experiences.

“Today’s conventional NFC mobile marketing solutions are not technologically advanced enough to create immersive or customizable consumer experiences,” Sutija added. “By leveraging OpenSense, Thinfilm is enabling the ‘smart bottles’ to carry digital information that can be accessed via NFC smartphones. Diageo can reap the benefits of the intelligence gleaned from our smart sensors and create engaging experiences for its customers. This is how we will begin to build the real Internet of Everything.”

Thinfilm makes for an ideal partner for Diageo. Jennifer Ernst, chief strategy officer at Thin Film Electronics ASA (Thinfilm), noted that Thinfilm has a long history in the printed electronics industry, including the industry’s first integrated-system to combine printed electronics, real-time sensing and NFC functionality in a smart label.

“The OpenSense solution was developed during the second half of 2014,” Ernst added. “Diageo announced its startup accelerator, Diageo Technology Ventures, in September 2014, inviting companies to offer technology solutions that address some of the key issues affecting the drinks business. Thinfilm began working with the company on the solution shortly after. It was a natural fit.

“At this stage, Thinfilm and Diageo are exploring the possibilities for incorporating OpenSense into Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottles,” Ernst said. “The collaboration is focusing on creating prototype ‘smart bottles’ that will speak to consumers in an entirely different way. While Thinfilm and Diageo are very excited about the potential of this innovating project, there are no timing details beyond the initial development and collaboration.”

“Our collaboration with Thinfilm allows us to explore all the amazing new possibilities enabled by smart bottles for consumers, retailers and our own business, and it sets the bar for technology innovation in the drinks industry” Michels noted.

Ernst noted that OpenSense technology offers unique capabilities to brand owners.

“OpenSense tags deliver thin, flexible, cost-effective protection with significant improvements over traditional NFC and RFID-based authentication,” Ernst said. “Existing wireless authentication methods suffer from serious limitations. Some require expensive, proprietary readers that limit the scale of deployments. Others intentionally destroy the antenna when a product is opened, making it impossible to interact with the product after opening.

“Thinfilm’s proprietary and patent-pending OpenSense technology overcomes those limitations by providing smartphone-centric NFC readability before and after product opening,” Ernst added. “Together with the economic benefits and scalability of printed electronics, the OpenSense solution enables protection of a wider range of products than feasible with expensive solutions based on complex encrypted integrated circuits.”

Along with Diageo, Thinfilm is working with the Internet of Thing (IoT) Smart Products platform offered by its UK-based partner, EVRYTHNG.

“With a simple tap of an NFC-enabled smartphone or mobile device, consumers, branded product manufacturers and trusted partners can instantly receive relevant messaging while a secure cloud database, EVRYTHNG, tracks product lineage and provides robust supply-chain analytics to enable smart business decisions,” Ernst said.

While Diageo is Thinfilm’s first partner for OpenSense, Ernst sees plenty of opportunities for the technology.

 “Diageo is the first company we are working with to demonstrate OpenSense on its packaging for its Johnnie Walker Blue Label brand,” Ernst said. “However OpenSense technology addresses compelling applications in a range of global markets, including wine and spirits, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, health and beauty care and automotive.”

Ernst said that the Diageo-Thinfilm project makes a clear case for the increasing viability of the printed electronics market.

“We envision a future in which printed electronics – the printing of non-volatile memory, temperature sensors and near-field communication technology – in the form of smart labels will make a connected world a reality,” Ernst said. “In this world, disposable items at the smallest unit level – like food and medicine – become smart objects. These smart objects bring intelligence to everything and become our agents, gathering actionable data and displaying it when we need to get involved – empowering humans to control their own destiny.

“The launch of OpenSense is a key milestone in harmonizing NFC mobile devices, the cloud and dynamic sensors to deliver context-aware and relevant data about the trillions of disposable items in our lives,” Ernst concluded. “This is how we will truly begin to build the Internet of Things. This is the real Internet of Everything.”