New Marketing Trend Through Packaging

Packaging plays a crucial role in positioning your product in the market.  If you are serious with your product you have to develop and continuously look for new ways on how to engage your target market to patronize your product.  Companies involved in manufacturing are now paying closer attention to how their packaging systems can get those new packages into the market faster and do it more cost effectively.  Having a high quality taping machine is a good start in ensuring and securing the product’s quality from the factory down to the consumer.  These case erectors and sealers are just part of a bigger and automated packaging system that a company has to invest in.

Going back to new marketing trends, interactive packaging is now gaining popularity especially in the food and beverage industry.   When it comes to promotion and selling of a product, packaging connects the product and the consumer beyond what media and advertisers can do; today packaging bridges the product and consumer through virtual encounter using technology.  Advertisers and Marketing people are now using augmented reality as a new way of engaging their market to buy their products.  Due to the popularity of Androids and smart phones in today’s generation, augmented reality is now transforming the way companies market their products.  Thought it has been around for more than 2 decades already, augmented reality is just being utilized today.  In essence if you create a packaging that has augmented reality, your view of the product that you are looking at through your smart phone is enhanced.  The packaging is augmented by a computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.  TicTac’s Shake Thing Up promo is one good example of a product, which used this kind of advertising through on-pack augmented reality.

Have you heard of QR codes or what they call “quick response code”?  This QR code is attached with a mobile application that will lead the consumer to a website, a game or a short video.  This kind of interactive packaging integrated with mobile applications is now seen in the marketing world.  These two-dimensional codes were originally used for the auto industry.  It was invented to track vehicles during the manufacturing process.  But due to its fast readability and larger storage capacity compared to the conventional barcodes, it is now used for interactive consumer advertising and packaging.  One successful story of QR code promotion is Verizon’s promotion.  Upon using the QR code, their customers are redirected to an online competition, which will allow them to win a smart phone.  This promotion increased the sales of that particular store by 200% for that week alone.

While sales and profits are the bottom-line of many companies, a business owner should not neglect that through packaging, a product is connected to the consumer in ways far beyond what you can imagine. 

Investing a little on an automated packaging system such as a taping machine and innovating on how you design and utilize your packaging like using QR codes and Augmented Reality will definitely help you achieve your objective, repeat sales and loyal customers.  Then profit will just follow.