Can I Say “Digital” Product Identity?

A few weeks ago, we were helping a client prepare some internal training to help her colleagues understand the basics of electronic product identity. One of her first questions was, “Can I call it digital product identity, instead?”

Short answer – of course you can. We’ll explain our invention and use of the term electronic product identity in a moment, but whether you say electronic or digital, the core concept is basically the same: A recognition of the fact that many of a company’s customers will engage with the company’s products with electronic tools rather than by physically touching or even seeing the actual product, so it makes sense to pay at least as much attention to a product’s electronic (or digital) identity, as on the branding elements that are the traditional focus of product marketers.

Think about it – many prescribing physicians never actually touch or even see the products they prescribe each day, but they certainly need to search for them in their EHR, easily differentiate them from other products (and differentiate between what may be several iterations of that product), then create a prescription for the product using a tool that may limit what the prescriber can do. The entire process of a prescriber searching for, selecting, and prescribing a product almost always takes place without the prescriber seeing the colors, fonts, packaging, and sometimes even the brand name, of the physical product. That’s why the electronic (or digital) product identity is so important.

We coined the term “electronic product identity” to help clients understand that concept, and to help traditional marketers remember that the branding elements on which they spend so much time and money might in many situations never be seen by some of their most important customers, while the electronic product identity is essential for things like e-prescribing and documentation. And how did we arrive at “electronic” instead of digital? Well, we hear people talk about EHRs and e-prescribing every day, but we never hear DHR or d-prescribing, do we? So, there you go.

By the way, when we typed in the search, “digital vs. electronic”, Google’s generative AI told us, “While often used interchangeably, "digital" and "electronic" have distinct meanings: "electronic" refers to devices or systems that use electricity, while "digital" specifically describes data or information represented in a binary format (1s and 0s).” Good to know. But we’re much more concerned with brand teams paying attention to their electronic / digital product identity, than which of the two terms you decide to use in your company.