Fourth largest brewer in the UK aggregates product imagery and information for retailers
Carlsberg UK is partnering with Brandbank to increase the depth of product information available on e-commerce sites.
Brandbank helps brand owners such as Carlsberg UK aggregate product imagery and information and its syndication to retailers.
The goal of the Carlsberg UK initiative is to let the online shopper make an informed buying decision and find the right product. Carlsberg UK offers almost 90 brands in the UK and sells these through a variety of channels.
Carlsberg UK is working with Brandbank to extend and enhance the product information that is available on the e-commerce sites of the major UK retailers. As well as a range of imagery and standard information, products online will include material on taste and flavour notes, food recommendations and other useful information.
Maximising re-use of online assets
The sophisticated range of product imagery is also being generated so that it can be used not just for e-commerce, but also for marketing and space planning. The companies have also begun work on 360-degree spin product imagery – making Carlsberg UK one of the first companies within the food and drinks sector to look at the potential benefits of such spin imagery.
Brandbank said its role is to create this content for Carlsberg UK, pull it together into one central place and then automatically syndicate the content to retailers. Having 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.
Carlsberg UK sends all its product packs to the Brandbank UK hub in Norwich, where specialised teams then create product imagery and capture enhanced product information. Once approved by Carlsberg UK, Brandbank distributes this imagery and enhanced information to retailers via machine-to-machine transfer. Any changes in product information are automatically updated on retailer e-commerce sites.
Ensuring product alignment and accuracy
"The Brandbank service means that we can painlessly pull together our product information in one central place," said Fran Peterson from Carlsberg. "The spin-off benefit from this that our sales teams have round-the-clock access to relevant and current information, no matter where they happen to be. All our products are aligned and with consistent datasheets in place across the business.”
Peterson added: "Brandbank maintains the information on our behalf, allowing us to easily supply our major retailer customers with timely changes and updates. We typically change about 50% of our product packaging in any one year, and free updates are included within the Brandbank service."
The Brandbank service includes professional product photography as standard, with images retouched so they are available in resolutions and formats specified by Carlsberg UK. Carlsberg UK added that, based on its own evaluation, it is more cost-effective to use this Brandbank service than any comparable alternative, like contracting a photographer on a product-by-product basis for example.