At NatureWorks' Innovation Takes Root conference in Orlando, Jim Carroll opened an event that brought together businesses interested in the future of materials and consumer-product packaging. NatureWorks' Ingeo plant-based biopolymer offered a tangible reason for these companies to rethink conventional packaging. Yet Carroll's keynote widened the frame: packaging's future would be determined not just by material science but by the changing behaviour of the consumers, retailers and brands it served.
He challenged an audience of several hundred executives to look at the package as something more than a protective shell. In a competitive consumer economy, the opening, handling, design and communication qualities of a package increasingly influenced the complete perception of the brand. An industry report covering the event highlighted Carroll's memorable conclusion: the package is the brand. Packaging decisions were becoming marketing, service and experience decisions as well as engineering decisions.
Digital commerce added new complexity. An item delivered through a rapidly evolving online fulfilment system could face different physical requirements and customer expectations from a product displayed on a traditional retail shelf. Carroll examined Amazon, faster delivery, new store concepts and shifting buying habits as evidence that packaging suppliers needed to watch developments outside their own sector. Their clients' customers were changing how they found, bought and received products, and that change would eventually affect specifications and opportunities upstream.
The presentation also explored intelligent and interactive packaging. Sensors, digital information and mobile interfaces suggested that the physical package could become a communication channel. Some examples were emerging possibilities rather than commercial standards. Their importance lay in showing that packaging could carry additional value through information, traceability, engagement and interaction, potentially creating new ways for brands to distinguish their products.
Materials innovation was the other part of the story. NatureWorks' plant-based polymer connected packaging to changing expectations around sustainability and alternative feedstocks. Carroll examined scientific acceleration, advanced materials and research collaboration to show that new substances and manufacturing methods could challenge what the industry considered normal. The commercial future would depend on the intersection of physical performance, environmental characteristics, cost and customer value, rather than on any one attribute alone.
Carroll finished by urging established firms to move beyond incremental improvements to familiar product lines. Watching consumer habits, experimenting with emerging technologies and partnering across disciplines would allow packaging companies to anticipate market needs rather than react to them. NatureWorks is a particularly strong historical-foresight case because contemporary third-party coverage corroborates the specific packaging-and-brand argument made on stage.
The Challenge: How could packaging suppliers combine materials science, environmental innovation and changing retail requirements to create greater value for the brands and consumers they served?
The Keynote: What Do World Class Innovators Do That Others Don't Do? — delivered as the opening keynote at Innovation Takes Root 2014.
The Message: Packaging is part of the customer experience and should be designed with the same strategic attention as the product, brand and channel through which it reaches consumers.
Six Trends Shaping Packaging and Materials:
- The Package Is the Brand: Design and interaction make packaging part of the consumer's perception of value.
- Plant-Based Materials: Biopolymers and related research expand alternatives to traditional material inputs.
- Connected Packaging: Emerging digital capabilities introduce new ways to communicate information through a physical package.
- E-Commerce Fulfilment: Changing channels and delivery methods reshape packaging performance requirements.
- Faster Consumer Trends: Product suppliers must respond more quickly to changes in tastes, convenience and retail behaviour.
- Cross-Disciplinary Innovation: Materials scientists, brand owners, retailers and logistics partners increasingly need to solve problems together.
THE PACKAGE IS NO LONGER JUST WHAT HOLDS THE PRODUCT. IT IS BECOMING PART OF THE BRAND.
