“We are tremendously excited to see this project from conception through to completion. I’ve been an ambassador for National Tree Day since 1999 and worked with Planet Ark on environmental initiatives for over 27 years.”

Partners for the artwork and label printing were Gravitas Media and Multi-Color Corporation (MCC) respectively. MCC acted as label partner for the project, while Gravitas conducted all the pre-press and digital file setup work for the project.

The true hero of the label, Laava's Smart Fingerprint, is an ‘on-bottle’ trust mark, which upon scanning and authenticating, activates the secure gateway for customers to connect directly with the Tamburlaine ‘True Earth experience’ – taking them on a journey from vine to wine, and giving them access to exclusive content and promotions.

“And each one is as unique as your own fingerprint, therefore every Tamburlaine Wines bottle, all two million of them, is unique and secure by design,” Gavin Ger, joint-CEO and commercial director, Laava, tells PKN. 

“This means we are able to create unique experiences per item, per bottle, and it means that each individual product can tell its own story – such as what type of wine it is, when and where it was bottled, and more.

“Also, because each one is secure, it makes it usable, and perfectly suited as an on-product authentication tool. And this can be done with a simple printed mark – it doesn’t need any special inks or special technology. Any digital printer in the world can print Laava Fingerprints,” Ger says.

“The fact that it uses this clever tech, which was developed in collaboration with the CSIRO, means that it actually is the world’s first globally scalable alternative to QR codes, which although they are popular, are actually not suited to secure applications.”

The gateway also provides the customer with secure access to Tamburlaine’s on-bottle loyalty and rewards partner Upstreet, whereby they can claim a credit for part of their purchase price ($4) in ETF shares for every bottle purchased and scanned. 

On top of this, for every bottle of True Earth purchased, consumers are also donating $2 to Planet Ark’s National Tree Day, supporting its efforts to plant over one million new trees, shrubs and grasses each year.

“A lot of the connected packaging intiatives and platforms that are out there have typically focused on coding things into QR codes, and by its very nature, once it's coded, that's it, it's done, it's out there in the world,” says Ger.

“With the Smart Fingerprint, the experiences can continually be upgraded and enhanced in the back-end, so brands will get total flexibility and can continue to deepen and change the engagement with its customers over time.

“Although people often asks us if it is like a QR code, we always say that is the upgrade to the QR code. What it does it fully matches an image that is fully randomised on our servers before it unlocks the experience for the consumer.”
Every Laava Smart Fingerprint is unique to each bottle of wine, enabling Tamburlaine to tailor customers’ experiences according to the label they have purchased.

The Smart Fingerprint utilises patented optical technology that matches randomly generated and optically-captured images by Laava on its secure servers before any content is allowed to be transmitted.

The Laava ecosystem operates securely in the cloud. Only Laava customers can generate Smart Fingerprints and only the Laava scanner can read them, limiting opportunities for bad actors.

Designed for consumer engagement, Laava Smart Fingerprint is built with a higher security than QR codes, making it ideal for blockchain. Every scan is recorded and tracked, and suspicious fingerprints can carry warnings or be cancelled in real-time. 

“It can be tailored to many different and specific experiences, such as being specific to particular markets with a change in language, the digital storytelling being delivered, for competition and promotions, or the connected packaging components through the experience engine, among many others,” Craig Wright, director for commercial strategy, Laava, tells PKN.

“And to add to Gavin's previous comments, the Fingerprint is more secure, has nothing encoded into it, it is just an image, so in terms of security, there is nothing to hack into, which is quite a unique feature of the solution.

“We are also working on improving and making it easier for smaller companies to design their own consumer engagement and experiences digitally, so they can get up and running super quick with Laava and design beautiful experiences that are really engaging for its customer base.”
There are three wines in the True Earth Collective portfolio: Wild Chardonnay, Malbec Shiraz and Cabernet Shiraz. Each are selected from organic vineyards across Orange and Canowindra in Central West NSW.

True Earth Collective wines will be available for purchase exclusively online and through Tamburlaine Cellar Doors for as long as they last.