The Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute (TLMI) hosted its 2015 Technical Conference at the Swissotel in Chicago, IL, USA, from September 1-3.  The conference’s record crowd experienced the theme, “Breaking Boundaries: Insight into Business Strategy and Technical Operations.” More than 380 label industry professionals attended the event, setting a new record for the biannual event, with the first one taking place 18 years ago.

In his opening remarks, Dan Muenzer, TLMI chairman and VP of marketing at Constantia Flexibles, said the association has an all-time high membership of more than 365 companies, made up of suppliers and converters. The conference featured presentations from 40 panelists, moderators and presenters, and there was also a tabletop networking event.

Terry Jones, founder and former CEO of Travelocity, delivered the keynote presentation, which focused on innovation and creating a stimulating workplace culture. The proper atmosphere, he said, focuses on brainstorming and creativity, which helps a business meet changing demands. “You won’t move forward unless you create a culture of innovation,” said Jones. “Innovation is like baseball. In baseball, if you fail 70% of the time, you’re actually really good. You get a lot of chances in baseball, and that’s important because success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal. We have to learn to experiment.”

There is more than one right answer to a problem, however, emphasized Jones. In order to succeed, he said, companies need focus and clarity on the end product. In addition to the right culture, the team and organization need to be in place to control the pace of change. “Old dogs can learn new tricks, but new dogs can learn old tricks, as well. You need to mix it up. Negativity can wipe out innovation, and one person can make all the difference. You also need to keep teams small, since big teams don’t innovate. If you need more than two pizzas to feed your team, it’s too big,” he said.

Jones’ presentation paved the way for discussions on new trends and technologies in the label and packaging market. Industry experts, including Muenzer, FLEXcon’s Michael Chevalier, Bobby Congdon of The Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design & Graphics, hosted a discussion titled “Breaking Boundaries: How Emerging Label Design Trends Will Impact Your Business.”

Muenzer engaged the audience with a presentation about “Competing Product Decoration Technologies.” In addition to new trends in pressure sensitive labels and shrink sleeves, the TLMI chairman looked at enhancements in foil, printed electronics and sustainable solutions.

As in every industry, manufacturers are finding ways to reduce costs and make products more sustainable. In the case of shrink sleeves, Muenzer stated that seaming has been eliminated, which has resulted in a 30% price savings. Other traditional options like foil have increasingly seen their uses expand, such as for security purposes.

Other possible technologies include the labeling of cans, direct digital print and paper bottles. Muenzer also touched upon experimentation with bottles constructed entirely out of PET materials.

Chevalier discussed “Shopper Marketing and Self-Adhesive Films.” Walking into a department store or supermarket can provide an overwhelming shelf space. According to Chevalier, the average supermarket has 30,000 SKUs and a store like Target will have north of 100,000. Walmart receives approximately 140 million customers per week while Walgreen’s receives 40 million shoppers. Brands subsequently need to explore how they can use new inks, colors and films to capture the customer’s attention at the shelf.

He said two developing trends include watermarking and online sales of CPG. Digital watermarking is defined as an imaging technology that embeds machine-readable images within the graphics. In this case, the bar code is embedded directly into the packaging.
“There are a lot of products vying for our attention,” stressed Chevalier. “Television, traditional media, is not what it used to be. We’re flying through the commercials there. Think about where your printing goes. It’s where the shoppers go, and that’s pretty powerful stuff.”

Brands want to make their impact with consumers in their home, in transit and on the shelf. The products must stand alone, considering the packaging will only capture the shopper’s attention for seven seconds. According to Chevalier, marketers want a brand experience all the way to purchase, and the process starts in the home. “Converters might consider packaging with unique substrates such as glitter, texture and materials like brochures and booklets,” he said. “Asset utilization, including the use of space in advertising, can be used for brand promotion. The brands ultimately want to transform the shelf environment to stand out to customers.”

In order to determine what works on the shelf, Congdon detailed various studies, research methods and experiments designed to analyze how packaging affects the consumer. Supplementing Chevalier’s presentation, Congdon reviewed the results of studies in which consumer attention and reaction was tracked to determine what captured a shopper’s attention and how long they spent looking at the packaging. The studies used eye-tracking biometrics that featured EEG, GSR and facial recognition.

“One of our focuses at the Institute is eye tracking,” explained Congdon. “When we design a package, how is it going to perform on the shelf? You’re going to redesign something and the whole point is to sell more. We want to see if consumers react to it better than before. We put products in the context that they’re going to be in at the store, and then have consumers look at it. We then use a number of different biometrics. We’ve got these really cool glasses with cameras tracking people’s movements. They track where you’re looking on the shelf, and we can map your gaze to the shelf.”

Interactive, Smart Labels
One way to engage customers at the shelf is through the use of smart, interactive labels. Colleen Twomey, assistant professor at Cal Poly State University, Tim McDonough, president and CEO at Flexo-Graphics, and Kurt Hudson, global director of digital printing for Actega, participated in presentations and a panel discussion on “Interactive Labels: Are You Immune to Kryptonite?”

The three speakers highlighted different aspects of smart technology, including the presence of NFC, Bluetooth, augmented reality and printed electronics. They explored how far the technology has come and how brands continue to improve on the QR reader.
“NFC can be used as card emulation, so I can conduct commerce and transactions with the technology,” said Twomey. “I can pay for parking; I can purchase movie tickets from a poster that has an NFC tag.”

The packaging industry’s growth could also hasten smart technology’s implementation. According to Twomey, packaging ranks number one on the list of print’s fastest growing business segments. Over the next five years, the US packaging industry is expected to see 7.8% growth. By 2017, printed packaging will account for roughly 43% of print product sales across the globe, she said.
With smart phones seemingly everywhere, the possibility exists for more people to connect with packaging than ever before. Smart phones have been known to increase the information available to shoppers.

“We’re seeing three things come to the forefront that used to be nice to have that are now must-haves: immediacy, simplicity and context,” explained Twomey. “Using smart technology in high-traffic areas like museums, public events, grocery stores and the ability to do mobile POS pay is exciting.”

NFC technology creates a one-to-one relationship with a consumer. This technology is activated when an NFC-enabled device is touched to a product, within four inches but usually less. It works in close proximity, and is available for Android and iOS. NFC capability came to the forefront when Johnnie Walker and Thinfilm released the Blue Label bottle with OpenSense. Thinfilm’s proprietary solution tracks the open and closed state of the bottle, as well as other assorted product information.

Bluetooth, on the other hand, is categorized as a one-to-many platform. It is estimated that 250 million people have a smart phone with Bluetooth capability, where a transmitting beacon uses a distance around 150 feet to communicate with customers. The San Francisco Soup Co. and Nivea both have tracking options, with the former providing rewards, coupons and loyalty points.

The interactivity featured in smart labels should play a major role in affecting millennials, said McDonough. Since millennials value experiences, they are more drawn to smart packaging because it promotes touch, visuals and interaction. Inventory data ensures that what is desired is in stock, while customers can be informed about products before they know they want them. Time savings and waste management are also potential benefits of smart technology.

“Your packaging has to do something,” McDonough explained. “We talked about millennials and their obsession with apps. What you have to do is somehow draw them in via their phone, whether it’s the QR code, augmented reality or something else. You need to create an experience. Millennials value an experience, and all they want to do is tell their friends how cool it was so they go do it.”

Hudson combined themes from Twomey’s and McDonough’s presentations in “The Who Were Right: See Me, Touch Me, Feel Me.” He stated that technology is no longer a drawn-out process. Instead, it’s one that can occur seemingly overnight.

Hudson used the music industry to illustrate just how quickly change can take place. When compact discs hit the market in 1983, it took about four years before they ultimately outpaced vinyl records. With the advent of the iPod in 2001, it took just two years to gain more popularity than CDs in 2003. The iPhone subsequently replaced the iPod, taking just one year. Finally, apps like Spotify took just six months to make more of an impact, and that was in 2009.

Labels maintain properties that have visual, auditory and kinesthetic value. Smart labels have the potential to engage the customer in all three phases. The five senses are blended with electronics.

According to Hudson, smart labels provide “a satisfying, product-centric and buyer-centric experience.” With NFC packaging, smart chips are capable of storing and recording the actions of customers. It also limits the “showrooming” that is prevalent with the QR reader, where a consumer is given information about various retailers that could discourage purchasing in that specific store.

The next trend in smart packaging could be ultra-variable labeling. In this scenario, the smart device talks to the label, rather than the label to a smart device. Therefore, based on a customer’s purchasing history, he or she would be alerted to the fact that they haven’t bought a certain food or drink in an extended period of time. Hudson believes the packaging could even speak to the customer. “This is the pace of change that we’re living in, and our labels will have the same kind of functionality that’s more and more powerful,” said Hudson. “This is not a presentation about what the answers are, this is a presentation about the fact that we need to pay attention to technology and understand what we’re dealing with as a human consumer. We need to find out how we tie those nifty gadgets into the tactician and sensory experience.” –Greg Hrinya