Important messaging has been carried via packaging since the days of missing persons posters on the back of milk cartons. Many of us will have childhood memories of reading the back of a cereal packet over breakfast. But given that packaging has the unique ability to be welcomed into people’s homes as a fundamental part of their day to day lives, and to be placed within and become a part of intimate family gatherings, are brands utilising this privileged position to its full potential?

At Tetra Pak we produce more than 500bn packages a year, and we’re keen to push the potential of packaging even further. I was brought on board to investigate ways to take this huge potential of connectivity and interaction with consumers and make it smarter, not make it happen but make it smarter.

For the last three years Tetra Pak has been working with Appetite Creative to explore the possibilities of connected packaging around areas including sustainability. Recycling, sustainability and the circular economy are incredibly complex themes, and there’s a great deal I didn’t know before I joined the industry. Environmental impact is one of the packaging industry’s biggest responsibilities and the issue of what happens to packaging after it’s been used, is more pertinent than ever.

A process of education

Tetra Pak is widely recycled, but it needs to be put in the right bin. Informing customers and making sure they understand the implications of the package, how to recycle it correctly, why to recycle it, has been one of our priorities working with Appetite.

We’ve had the privilege of kicking off a huge European-wide project that will target close to one billion packages and collect data from consumers around their knowledge of recycling, through the packaging itself. The mechanism used is the QR code, which has enjoyed a recent resurgence thanks to the track and trace system implemented as part of the response to COVID-19.

Through data collection and an interface built for us by Appetite, we hope to capture and analyse qualitative and quantitative data from consumers throughout Europe and use the insights not just for our sector but for wider environmental and sustainability organisations and associations. We’re eager to know how awareness around sustainability changes if you live in, say, Zurich, versus if you live in rural Italy, and how we can help improve existing levels of awareness.

Initially the project was rolled out in Germany as a short quiz to gauge consumers’ knowledge about recycling. Although the initial quiz was literally a couple of questions, the data showed consumers were spending two to three minutes of their time on the quiz, and the opportunity was there to offer more education and more of an experience to customers.

The importance of both science and objectivity

The QR code now offers consumers three different experiences: a quiz, a memory game and a roulette wheel style game, all around the theme of recycling. These offerings allow the us to re-engage with consumers multiple times, effectively giving Tetra Pak the opportunity to turn their packaging into a media channel.

Sustainability is a complex topic where everybody has an opinion but it’s hard to get data to drive the right steps. It’s really important for us to be scientific and objective in understanding how we can improve. We can do a super low carbon footprint process but if people don’t then put the package in the right bin it’s not worth anything.

The project also involved persuading sceptical brands of the usefulness of QR codes. Just putting a QR code on a package doesn’t mean people will scan it. But even with a pretty low scan rate, people are highly involved, which came as a surprise.

Digital solutions

Dialogue with consumers is what many brands struggle with, because once a package is out of a factory the brand doesn’t know where it goes. The nature of QR codes however means that we are constantly getting feedback on how customers are reacting, and we can adapt and iterate as they go along.

Injecting digital solutions into a traditional company like Tetra Pak has been an exciting journey. We’re keen to explore options like AR to find new ways to answer customer needs. I can imagine in the future a package, like any other product, becoming something you can have a dialogue with, not just in an opportunistic way but also to improve products and services.

Packaging is very pervasive; it goes into customers’ houses and it’s a great media tool. Merging the physical value chain with digital data really amplifies the potential to make it exponentially more powerful.