Does your brand recognise its digital twin?

You’re standing in the pasta sauce aisle, scanning a label that’s a masterwork of information architecture.

Every millimetre serves a purpose. Ingredients, nutritional facts, expiry date, allergen warnings, storage advice, serving suggestions, country of manufacture, a URL for the brand’s website and even a postal address. Then of course there is a perfectly photographed, enticing tomato, that promises culinary bliss. This humble jar carries a lot of crucial information, compressed into a space the size of, or often smaller than a business card. And let’s not forget the barcode, the packaging innovation that since 1979 has enabled retailers to add this jar of pasta sauce to my bill, without the need to manually punch the price into a cash register.

But with the explosion of online shopping, that beautifully crafted physical label is only half the story. Somewhere in the digital ether, that brand has a twin, a data double living across countless databases, e-commerce platforms, and AI systems. And chances are, that twin is broken, outdated, or downright unrecognisable.

Online channels now account for 12% of total FMCG sales in Australia and are projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 12.43% through to 2032. But growth means nothing if a brand’s digital presence is a house of cards built on inaccurate data. This is a digital twin crisis, where brands that dominate the physical shelf risk serious reputational damage and lost sales because their digital data doesn’t match reality.

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The pasta sauce jar might boast perfect packaging, but what happens when that same product appears on Amazon with the wrong ingredients list? Or when a grocery app suggests your new organic variant that was discontinued six months ago? Or when an AI assistant confidently recommends your product to someone who has a life-threatening allergic reaction because the digital dataset missed your latest recipe reformulation?

This isn’t hypothetical chaos, it’s already happening. While packaging professionals have mastered the art of cramming comprehensive information into tiny spaces (seriously, chewing gum packaging deserves Olympic gold), the digital realm operates by entirely different rules. Here, brands exist as scattered fragments across hundreds of databases, each potentially telling a different story about that brand and what it offers.

The stakes have never been higher. Every ingredient change, every promotional campaign, every seasonal variant creates ripple effects across the digital ecosystem. Miss one update in one database, and suddenly the premium organic sauce is being sold as regular, the limited-time recipe is permanently featured, or allergen information is dangerously wrong. The reputational damage can be swift and severe.

Harry Corsham, partner at Town Square

Garbage in, garbage out

Brands have built their empires on controlling the shelf experience. They perfected the science of packaging, placement, and point-of-sale appeal. But digital-native competitors understand something crucial, in an AI-driven marketplace, data accuracy isn’t just important, it’s existential.

When agentic AI systems govern what consumers see, wrong data means trust-busting misrepresentation or even total invisibility. When voice assistants make purchasing decisions, outdated information means lost sales.

The digital-first retail transformation will take another step forward when GS1, the global standards organisation for barcodes, introduces 2D barcodes in 2027, creating the potential for every package to become a digital experience gateway for shoppers.

The simple scan will unlock new dimensions of brand engagement for consumers and unprecedented supply chain efficiency for brand owners. Data analysts will have a field day, unearthing a whole new world of consumer insights.

But as technology sets a new agenda for brands and retailers, companies still struggling with basic data consistency will find themselves locked out of the most significant market innovations in a generation. AI-readiness is an imperative that calls for a robust, accurate, and comprehensive digital twin.

This isn’t just about keeping up with technology, it’s about survival in a marketplace where the physical product is increasingly inseparable from its digital incarnation and inaction will inevitably lead to erosion of brand trust. A recent audit conducted by K10X of 85 brands across just two data attributes revealed ingredient mismatches for two thirds of brands and allergen mismatches for 85% of brands.

Leading international FMCG brand owners and retailers are onto this, working with a new breed of tech specialists to identify and resolve digital twin compliance issues to mitigate risk and unlock growth in the rapidly emerging digital-first retail landscape.

The companies winning this race understand that digital twin technology isn’t a nice-to-have upgrade, it’s the foundation for everything from supply chain efficiency to AI-powered consumer engagement. They’re creating a single source of truth that evolves in real-time, ensuring that every touchpoint tells the same accurate story about their brand.

Physical packaging will always matter, but it’s no longer enough. As consumers interact with brands across multiple touchpoints, from supermarket shelves to smartphone screens to AI agents, data consistency isn’t just professional, it’s commercial survival.

Brands that recognise this reality and invest in digital twin strategies will be poised to exploit the advantages that technology is bringing to the retail ecosystem, setting the agenda for the next decade of retail innovation. Those that don’t will watch their market share decline, one inaccurate data point at a time.

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