For the past few years, marketers have repeated the same line: Data is the new oil. The saying is tidy, but it made more sense in the era when data scarcity was a major challenge. The companies that were seen as winners were the ones that extracted the most data and analytics. But today, scarcity is no longer the issue — far from it. Every modern brand has more customer data than it knows what to do with. The constraint isn’t collection anymore; it’s analyzing and extracting insights to produce meaningful actions that can transform the business. A more accurate comparison is to say that data is uranium. It is one of the most powerful assets a business has when refined with the right containment. Left unattended, disconnected from a clear strategy or handled without discipline, it does damage. Poorly used data can easily become a wasted budget, eroded customer trust or bad decisions that are made with confidence, but no real insight behind them.

The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper, PepsiCo, along with other US beverage companies, have announced the nationwide expansion of a shared digital ingredient transparency infrastructure developed to empower consumers with information about the ingredients in their drinks. The QR codes displayed on beverage cans and bottles enable consumers to connect to Good to Know Facts, a database created by American Beverage, a trade association that represents the US non-alcoholic beverage industry.  The database is said to offer factual, non-industry information about more than 140 beverage ingredients.

We’ve heard it a million times by now: “Print is dead.” It’s a mistaken impression (see what I did there?) because the evidence around us every day proves the opposite. While some roles for print may be in decline, as a communications channel, it has enormous power to reach audiences that digital alone just can’t match. A few months ago, I saw a headline for an article in The Drum — a London-based marketing and media website — that asked: “As agencies sniff out scent specialisms, is poly-sensory branding here to stay?” Having recently written about the use of scent in direct mail campaigns, I’m pretty familiar with how marketers in the print world regard sensory marketing: an opportunity to reach their audience.