The brave new world of packaging
The IoT genie is out of the bottle. It’s not going back in, and its promising to deliver on consumer desire: 24 billion IoT devices by 2020, $6 trillion spent on IoT solutions over the next five years, generating an estimated $13 trillion by 2525 – a digital ecosystem encompassing businesses, consumers and government at a global level. The next Industrial Revolution is in the post, writes Paul Simonet, the European strategic director of Anthem.Intelligent lighting and heating have already become a part of everyday life for many; as the technology spreads throughout the home with products like Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridge. And, the cutting edge promotion of FMCGs will revolve around the most intimate interface with the consumer, the product itself – and that means packaging.
The milk carton in your basket will soon be able to tell you when it’s past its sell by date by monitoring oxygen levels in a carton, or when its empty by measuring weight, and to control your calorie intake by tracking your consumption.
Unilever’s announcement two years ago that the world of IoT is ‘of huge interest’ signalled what many market leaders had begun to realize: FMCGs and smart packaging could be marriage made in branding heaven.
Packaging is a marketing channel in itself, and one which can connect with people throughout the sales and ownership cycle. In terms of advertising, the average cost per advertising click is $1.50 whereas a click on a pack is free. It’s already costed into the production of your FMCG and the consumer pays for it – a compelling case in the argument for owned versus earned media.
Consumables are rarely decanted, so packaging becomes a regular and on-going source of brand engagement at the point of need. When you supercharge this process with digital connections, you’ve got commercial dynamite.
The big brands of FMCG are committed. In 2011, Nestle Included augmented reality with their breakfast cereal, in the form of a 3D game accessed using a tag from the back of the box. Such innovations can engage the end user in an ongoing, live conversation, generating valuable customer data and, invaluable, brand loyalty.
Drinks manufacturers have arrived early to the party. This year, Diageo introduced a prototype smart bottle for the for Johnnie Walker Blue Label whisky, using technology developed by partner Thinfilm electronics. Sensor tags not only track the bottle across the supply chain, but engage the customer at the point of sale, and beyond.
Diageo found that half of the millions of Internet searches about its brands occurred within a few feet of the bottle on the shelf, allowing Diageo to send personalised communications and information about the product to consumers via their smartphones. This is the beginning of a one to one conversation that follows the customer out of the shop and into the home; the tags detect the moment the bottle has been opened, allowing Diageo to communicate suggestions for enhancing the customer’s experience.
Asolut Vodka is developing a similar platform, using NFC to enable ‘connected bottles’ to choose lighting and music to suit your choice of cocktail. Connected bottles can also provide details of their provenance, delivering a message of authentication. When the bottle is running low, it can re-order itself, completing the cycle while all the time triggering immanent marketing experiences and capturing real-time supply chain analytics, obviating the demands of earned media and tortuous market research.
The implications of these innovations are game changing. When a product can monitor, analyse, re-order, self-heal and describe itself, a lot of costly peripheral media activity goes out of the window – these functions become subsumed into the object itself. When the best source of expert information about a product is the product, the traditional shopping experience starts to seem a bit old school; live data streams enable businesses to pre-empt customer’s needs in ways unthinkable within the confines of bricks-and-mortar.
A new dialogue is opening up between producer and consumer. Companies that remain resistant or skeptical about smart packaging may soon find themselves in a sorcerer’s apprentice scenario, struggling to compete with the edge that early adopters have over the bandwagoneers. Forward thinking brands know that the future is a two-way street with no speed bumps.