Authentication and Future Options with NFC Tags in Luxury Goods

An international luxury goods brand was interested in providing authentication for their products while creating a platform for additional concepts in the future like resale and brand engagement.

An international luxury goods brand was interested in authenticating its products and developing more of a relationship with consumers.  In the future the brand was considering the creation of a resale concept that would allows its customers to resell genuine products through a common portal where the brand would be able to validate all the resale merchandise, but the resale site was a future goal.

The brand evaluated a variety of technologies but opted for NFC tags embedded in products because of the serialized nature of the markers and the ability for the customer to engage with the tag with a smartphone.  The first phase of the project was identifying a location and getting the tags incorporated into the products as part of the manufacturing process for shoes, bags, and other accessories.

In conjunction with an external creative agency, the brand’s marketing team was developing the customer interaction that would happen when a customer tapped the tag.  The process would include a process to register the item which would be a prefilled-out form based on the tag id and then a brand reinforcement video touting the brand’s benefits and cache.  Adding a video of that individual product or something similar being made was considered and could be included in the future. 

The first iteration of the experience included product registration and the authentication that the product was real done in conjunction with a chosen software vendor.  Based on customer adoption over the first 2 years, a decision would be made on adding additional features.

Tapwow Takeaways

• Any brand, no matter the price point, can benefit from improved interaction with the consumer and a knowledge of the products being purchased.
• Serialized IDs provided by NFC tags can be used for many applications, but they do not have to be implemented at the same time.  The inclusion of the ID makes it possible to do different things now and, in the future, if the software and partners you use are flexible enough.
• Learning over time is an essential part of any business process.  Begin an interaction and conversation with the customer and then see where it takes you over time.  Flexible content and interactions make evolution simple with NFC tags.