Boxing clever with digital

Improve­ments in dig­i­tal print­ing, and the use of pack­ag­ing to dri­ve inte­gra­tion between goods and the inter­net of things, means the tech­nol­o­gy is now a key to pro­duc­ing “smart” prod­ucts.

But Paul Young, head of pack­ag­ing ser­vices at DHL Sup­ply Chain, warns it is impor­tant for com­pa­nies to under­stand which prob­lems dig­i­tal pack­ag­ing can solve, rather than sim­ply fol­low­ing the trend.

QR codes, for exam­ple, have his­tor­i­cal­ly been the main form of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion on pack­ag­ing and, while there have been some suc­cess­ful uses, there are also lim­i­ta­tions.

Jon Wilkins, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Euro­pean Automa­tion, says: “We are review­ing our pack­ag­ing and, inter­est­ing­ly, we will be drop­ping the QR codes. Hard­ly any­body uses them and they’ve had no impact on the cus­tomer.”

Mike Banach, senior research man­ag­er at Plas­tic Log­ic, says he believes that in the short term pack­ag­ing inno­va­tion will be focused pri­mar­i­ly on labelling for secu­ri­ty and pre­ven­tion of fraud. The Inter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce has esti­mat­ed that the total eco­nom­ic impact of coun­ter­feit­ing and pira­cy in 2015 alone will be between $1.2 bil­lion and $1.7 bil­lion.

“Brand own­ers are look­ing for secure labelling that has some user-input mech­a­nism [image sen­sor or touch pad] and out­put device [dis­play] inte­grat­ed on the same tag,” he says. Plas­tic Logic’s flex­i­ble tran­sis­tor tech­nol­o­gy is enabling the fab­ri­ca­tion of these com­po­nents on pack­ag­ing sub­strates such as PET or poly­eth­yl­ene tereph­tha­late. The abil­i­ty to track high-val­ue goods from devel­op­ment to point of use might have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate fakes.

FOOD REGULATION

Sim­i­lar inno­va­tion is being dri­ven by increased reg­u­la­tion in the food sup­ply chain, espe­cial­ly fol­low­ing chal­lenges such as the 2013 horse­meat scan­dal. Between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of food pro­duced glob­al­ly nev­er reach­es the con­sumer, often thrown away due to prob­lems ascer­tain­ing its fresh­ness. Smart labelling reduces the human-error fac­tor by pro­vid­ing a visu­al indi­ca­tion of fresh­ness, which cross­es lan­guage and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers.

Com­pa­nies, includ­ing Thin­Film and Insignia Tech­nolo­gies, have devel­oped ways of mon­i­tor­ing tem­per­a­ture con­trol in the glob­al sup­ply chain. Thin­Film is devel­op­ing labels that mon­i­tor tem­per­a­ture changes dur­ing ship­ping and store the data for lat­er analy­sis. Insignia Tech­nolo­gies has cre­at­ed labels using tem­per­a­ture respon­sive pig­ments that can be eas­i­ly incor­po­rat­ed into plas­tic films and inks which then dis­play these colour-chang­ing sens­ing prop­er­ties.

This type of inno­va­tion could also have a major impact in health­care, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the devel­op­ing world, with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of med­i­cines and vac­cines where lack of clar­i­ty about fresh­ness or tem­per­a­ture changes in trans­porta­tion can often lead to waste.

With the evo­lu­tion of the dig­i­tal age, brands can now eas­i­ly chan­nel and adapt per­son­al­i­sa­tion to the mass mar­ket

Joe Mor­gan at Mat­ter of Form says: “Med­ical com­pa­nies are cur­rent­ly spear­head­ing a rev­o­lu­tion in dig­i­tal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pack­ag­ing with meth­ods such as ‘dial-a-dose’ smart-cap con­cept for drugs. This dis­plays the num­ber of times med­ica­tion is con­sumed as well as alert­ing the user when they need to take their dose and even con­nect­ing to health­care cen­tres to mon­i­tor con­sump­tion.”

Such inno­va­tions make it eas­i­er for patients to con­trol their dosages, which is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant with age­ing pop­u­la­tions.

There is no doubt that the best-known devel­op­ments in pack­ag­ing have come about through inno­va­tion in mar­ket­ing and brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions. QR codes may have led the way in enabling peo­ple to get more infor­ma­tion about prod­ucts, but brand-con­sumer inter­ac­tion is now mov­ing fur­ther and faster.

DIGITAL-MEDIA CHANNEL

As co-founder of EVRYTHING Andy Hob­s­bawn points out, the falling costs of tech­nol­o­gy, com­bined with the mass adop­tion of mobile devices and ubiq­ui­tous broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty, “enables brands effec­tive­ly to expand the lim­it­ed on-pack real estate into the dig­i­tal world, turn­ing their prod­ucts into an owned dig­i­tal-media chan­nel, enabling them to devel­op a one-to-one mar­ket­ing rela­tion­ship with con­sumers”.

Kather­ine Tor­rence, glob­al client engage­ment direc­tor at Red­Works, says: “Tra­di­tion­al­ly prod­uct per­son­al­i­sa­tion was con­sid­ered to be a high-end mar­ket­ing tech­nique that catered to the appeal of lux­u­ry brands. How­ev­er, with the evo­lu­tion of the dig­i­tal age, sev­er­al brands can now eas­i­ly chan­nel and adapt per­son­al­i­sa­tion to the mass mar­ket. Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ cam­paign is per­haps one of the most suc­cess­ful to cap­ture the atten­tion of the world.”

There are oth­er well-known cam­paigns which have used an aug­ment­ed-real­i­ty approach to gen­er­ate cus­tomer inter­ac­tion. LEGO cre­at­ed a cam­paign which enabled cus­tomers to scan a bar­code and see a 3‑D ver­sion of their planned build. Heinz made their ketchup label scannable, enabling access to a recipe, list of ingre­di­ents and a teach­ing video. While Appy used Tetra Pak car­tons to expand their social media inter­ac­tion with cus­tomers, through cus­tomis­ing online pho­tos.

New tech­nolo­gies and new ways of inter­act­ing with the cus­tomer are high­ly sought after, and it is this that will dri­ve inno­va­tion. Of course, chipsets and active sen­sor tags may be cur­rent­ly eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing for con­sumer pack­aged goods. NFC (near-field com­mu­ni­ca­tion) or RFID (radio-fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion) can cost up to 20p a pack, depend­ing on vol­ume, while chipsets using Blue­tooth, wi-fi or oth­er active tech­nolo­gies can cost upwards of £6 per unit.

But as Mr Hob­s­bawn con­cludes: “The key to the via­bil­i­ty of design options is being able to jus­ti­fy the return on invest­ment or ROI. Imple­ment­ing a form of dig­i­tal trig­ger on a pack will impact pack­ag­ing cost to some extent, even if sim­ply to include a URL and call to action, but if a brand con­sid­ers it in the right way, there is an ROI case to be made.”

FOOD REGULATION

DIGITAL-MEDIA CHANNEL