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Packaging Design #appetitecreative Smart Packaging

5 smart packaging ideas for connecting consumers

By Jenny Stanley | Managing director

Appetite Creative

|

The Drum Network article

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July 7, 2021 | 6 min read

As you may have read in our previous blog article, smart packaging is an umbrella term that refers to packaging that uses various and new technologies to go beyond your regular packaging.

Appetite Creative on how to connect marketers with consumers through packaging.

Appetite Creative on how to connect marketers with consumers through packaging

Smart packaging enables brands to engage with consumers through a browser-based app, image recognition, QR codes, barcodes or other advanced technologies implemented on the packaging design. These connect consumers to exciting and relevant experiences.

Let’s look at five examples of how different brands use smart packaging ideas to better connect to consumers.

Interactive quizzes

Smart packaging offers brands the opportunity to launch interactive questionnaires and quizzes digitally integrated into their packages. This is a great way to get high engagement rates while getting customer feedback in an exciting yet non-intrusive way.

A perfect illustration of this would be Tetra Pak’s mobile interactive quiz.

Tetra Pak wanted a way to communicate its commitment to sustainability and its environmental impact, so we created an eco-themed experience through a fun mobile quiz to test users’ knowledge on the brand’s environmental impact and recycling.

The quiz had an organic-themed design that looked like it was made of recycled paper, just like Tetra Pak’s own products, mixed with our trademark animated elements, resulting in an educational, fun and engaging experience. Moreover, we generated QR codes to be implemented on the brand’s packaging. These tracked on a real-time backend dashboard the time, day, size of package, location and store where the product had been bought.

Tetra Pak’s mobile interactive quiz had two levels (an easier one for kids and a tricker version for adults), with each round consisting of five questions. Its goal was to add more trees to a forest, so whenever a player would give a correct answer, a tree would grow in the game.

For more examples of smart packaging with Tetra Pak, take a look here.

Share personalized content

In addition to obtaining additional or exclusive content, smart packaging allows consumers to create and share content by themselves, as we saw in the ‘Message in a Bottle’ campaign, created by beer company Andes.

Each bottle had a QR code that consumers would need to scan through their smartphones to record short video messages that they would then give to their friends or family once they scanned the code again. So, if the recipient wanted to respond, they would get another bottle and record another message.

It was a great way to have fun and encourage users to keep coming back and re-engaging with the brand.

Games, games and games

When it comes to food and beverage brands, consumers tend to prioritize aspects like product cost and flavor over experience.

However, if companies garner interest in the product experiences, offering gamified features on their packages’ design like digital games scanned from bottle caps or attached to packaging via QR codes, they can create engaging experiences for their consumers, gaining their loyalty.

One great example of this would be Emmi Good Day’s gamified experience.

To educate their target audience about the nutritional benefits of their product range and their new Good Day milk drinks, we integrated Unique QR codes on the packaging of Emmi’s Good Day products.

Thus, whenever users scanned them using their smartphones, they could play any of four interactive games such as the Emmi Jump Game, Emmi Fall Game, Emmi Flip and the Tinder-style Personality Quiz.

For more examples of gamified experiences, check out PepsiCo’s connected experience.

Become brand ambassadors

Smart packaging can offer consumers the opportunity to be part of a brand’s packaging. For example, snack brand Mezcla included a QR code on their package design that users could scan to observe a collection of artworks submitted by other consumers worldwide, and also have the opportunity to present their own for a chance to feature on Mezcla’s packaging.

Augmented reality

One of the most exciting technologies within smart packaging is augmented reality that allows consumers to connect with products before they even open them, which can act as a powerful storytelling tool. Just look at the example of wine brand 19 Crimes and their AR feature Living Labels.

By downloading the Living Wine Labels app, customers can point their smartphone at the label and hear the tale of an infamous convict from the characters themselves.

Get started with smart packaging

If you want to learn more about smart packaging ideas to connect with your consumers, or already have a project in mind, don’t hesitate to reach us. At Appetite Creative, we help our clients design campaigns that add real value to their users’ lives, transforming packaging into interactive brand tools and creating meaningful brand relationships.

Jenny Stanley is managing director at Appetite Creative.

Packaging Design #appetitecreative Smart Packaging

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Appetite Creative

The Connected Experiences Studio - We connect your Brand with Today's Audiences!

We are a multi-award-winning creative technology studio with a passion to bring advertising to life, inspire others through creativity and innovation and deliver results.

Visit our website on https://appetitecreative.com/

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