“It’s too damn hard" is not an acceptable excuse: Content...or tags...or actual item data?

By Gregg London, Owner of Gregg London Consulting, and U.P.C. Data

You hear a lot about content these days, from marketing to e-commerce to promotions to...almost every facet in the lifecycle of a food and beverage Item.

Why? Because content has the capability to drive sales. But is content "enough"?

What about the actual item data? The nutrition, the ingredients, the allergens, the warnings, the endorsements, the health and wellness claims, and more.

Given that more than 100 hundred million people in the US are afflicted with food allergies (wheat, peanut, soy, etc.), chronic medical conditions (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) or food related diseases (celiac disease, lactose intolerance, etc.) – the ability to assess whether a food or beverage Item can be consumed safely requires accurate and reliable Item data, not just “romance copy" or “why buy lines" or “extended descriptions".

So, why the attention to content, and the seeming lack of attention to data?

Two quotes come to mind:

Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman - "it's too damn hard".

Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own - "it's supposed to be hard...If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it"

Makes sense; especially when you realise that the number of firms around the world, that maintain fully attributed item data, number less than ten; but the number of content and marketing firms number in the hundreds, maybe thousands.

Put another way, tell someone they have to maintain 150 plus fields for a single item - and that data has to be exact - or tell someone they have to create a sentence or two that consists largely of marketing speak and buzzwords...and which will they choose?

What about tags and attributes? Oh, you mean, the "shortcut"? This is where a firm simply looks at the nutrition fact panel (perhaps all of it, perhaps less), and assigns a tag or attribute like “low fat" or “low sodium" or “high in vitamin C".

They look at the Food Allergen Labelling Consumer Protection Act Statement (FALCPA), and assign a tag or attribute - like "Soy Free" or "Free from Dairy".

Here's a question - who determines low fat for these tags? The USDA, the FDA, the firm maintaining the tag, the manufacturer?

Here's another question - what happens if the FALCPA statement is not complete, if there are other allergens present (in the ingredient statement not in the FALCPA statement)?

Bottom line - the demand for accurate product information has skyrocketed. The evolution of new technologies, increasing governmental regulation on foods and beverages, and the growing sophistication of consumers have placed an untenable burden on manufacturers and retailers.

Inaccurate and incomplete data not only dilutes or damages a brand name, but also results in bad records, and, if used in a “mission critical" application (say, health and wellness application), can endanger the user.

And "it's too damn hard" is not an acceptable excuse.

About the author: Gregg London, a certified supply chain consultant, has spent the past 23 years building one of the largest fully attributed, item level databases for food (packaged and perishable) and beverage (alcoholic and non-alcoholic).

He operates U.P.C. Market and U.P.C. Data 4 Spirits and can be reached at: gregg@glondon.com