Why We Need to Adopt “Connected Labels” as the New Industry Term

As the industry evolves, we are facing a major challenge: the lack of a standardized term to describe these digital labeling innovations. Terms like e-labels, smart labels, digital labels, and Digital Product Passports are used interchangeably, creating widespread confusion.

It’s time for a change. Connected Labels is the term that can bring clarity and unify the industry by encapsulating e-labels, Digital Product Passports, and potentially anything else we wish to label in the physical world.

Simplified Definition of Connected Labels

Connected Labels are a type of technology that links physical objects to useful information and experiences online. They provide important details, identify the object, and facilitate tracking. This information comes from the original creator or a trusted source. Each Connected Label has a unique global ID and is meant to last as long as the object it’s connected to.

Scholarly Definition of Connected Labels

Connected Labels are an advanced set of technologies that link physical objects to structured, digital information and interactive experiences. They provide important details, identify objects, and facilitate tracking across their lifecycle through standardized, data-driven systems. Unlike traditional links to websites or marketing materials, Connected Labels offer reliable, long-lasting access to data.

Current examples of Connected Labels include e-labels, which digitize traditional product labels, and Digital Product Passports (DPPs), which track a product’s entire lifecycle, ensuring compliance and sustainability. Technologies like GS1 QR codes and GTIN identifiers are used to ensure global consistency in identification and traceability.

As technology evolves, Connected Labels remain a flexible and adaptable term, capable of encompassing any future innovations that link the physical world to digital information, enabling transparency, traceability, and engagement.

Examples of Connected Labels

Connected Label is a comprehensive term that covers a range of technologies transforming how we label and interact with physical objects. This includes:

• E-labels are in simple terms about the digitalization of traditional paper labels, offering enhanced product information through digital platforms.
• Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are a hugely complex technology that automatically collects and tracks data throughout the entire supply chain, ensuring full lifecycle transparency.
• And beyond: Connected Labels can apply to any physical object or environment, allowing us to bridge the gap between the physical world and digital data.

What Connected Labels Are Not

While Connected Labels use technologies like QR codes, they are fundamentally different from common uses of QR codes or other digital tools in several key ways.

Connected Labels are not:

• Simple QR codes linking to websites: Unlike QR codes that redirect to a webpage or marketing content, Connected Labels link to structured, enduring data that provides valuable information about the object itself, powered by standardized systems like GS1.
• Technical identifiers for one-off purposes: QR codes and NFC tags are sometimes used for isolated, technical applications like device pairing or quick information retrieval. Connected Labels, however, are designed to connect the physical world to long-term digital information, facilitating transparency, traceability, and engagement throughout an object’s lifecycle.
• Purely marketing or promotional tools: While Connected Labels can be powerful tools for marketing and brand engagement, their foundation is built on standardized, structured data. This ensures that their primary function is to inform, identify, and track physical objects, providing real-time updates and long-lasting information beyond marketing purposes.
• Temporary or disposable labels: Connected Labels are not short-lived or meant for temporary use. They are designed to last for the entire lifespan of the object or product, providing ongoing data and updates as long as the object exists.
• Limited to consumer products: Many people associate labels with consumer goods, but Connected Labels apply to a much broader range of physical objects, including industrial equipment, raw materials, locations, and even natural objects like plants or wildlife.

In essence, Connected Labels are not limited to short-term, promotional, or isolated technical functions. Instead, they represent a broader concept of linking the physical world to data-rich digital experiences that last as long as the object itself, and they are not confined to a single type of product or industry.

The Thinking Behind the Term

When considering a term to describe this new form of label, several options came to mind. For example, digital labels might seem like a logical choice. However, this term has already been “hijacked” by the printing industry, where it refers to the digital printing of paper labels. Some also use digital labels to describe e-labels, but this is too narrow. What we need is a broader term that can encapsulate both e-labels and Digital Product Passports (DPPs), not as the only solutions, but as examples within a much larger concept.

The term had to represent a system where one part, such as a QR code or NFC tag, exists on a physical object. That physical label serves as the tangible connection point between the object and its associated information, experiences, and functionalities in the digital world. Essentially, the physical label “connects” to a vast amount of digital data and interactivity.

Connected Label became the ideal term because it captures this broader idea of connection—not just between a physical label and digital information, but also between evolving technologies and the physical world. As technologies change and evolve, whether through QR codes, NFC tags, or future innovations, we need a term that reflects what a label traditionally means: a way to identify, inform, and track, but now extended to include a connection to the digital world. Connected Labels encompasses this dynamic link between the physical and digital realms, ensuring that the term remains relevant as technologies advance.

Why We Need a Unified Term

The adoption of Connected Labels as the new standard term will bring several key benefits:

1. Clarity and Consistency: By unifying e-labels, Digital Product Passports, and other digital labeling technologies under one clear term, businesses, consumers, and regulators can operate with a shared understanding of what Connected Labels represent.
2. Future-Proofing the Industry: As new digital labeling technologies emerge, Connected Labels can serve as an adaptable framework that accommodates future innovations without adding complexity to the terminology.
3. Bridging Physical and Digital Worlds: Whether it’s e-labels, Digital Product Passports, or any labeled object in the physical world, Connected Labels emphasize the connection between physical objects and digital data, making the interaction seamless and transparent.

Let’s embrace this term, bring clarity to the industry, and set the foundation for a future where products, data, and the physical world are seamlessly connected.