How Connected Packaging Can Elevate Your Brand

An overview of connected packaging:

• Connected Packaging Revolution: Connected packaging merges the physical and digital realms, transforming mere boxes into gateways to immersive brand experiences.
• Engagement Redefined: QR codes, URLs, hashtags, and barcodes are just the beginning. With connected packaging, brands can gamify, offer exclusive content, and even provide real-time updates tailored to consumers' needs and interests.
• Bridge to Loyalty: Consumers crave meaningful interactions. Connected packaging builds loyalty by offering engaging experiences that extend far beyond the initial purchase, fostering lasting connections between brands and customers.
• Tailored Experiences: From personalized instructions to location-based content, connected packaging tailors experiences to individual preferences. Imagine scanning a QR code on your coffee package and seeing exactly where those beans were sourced!
• Oliver Inc. Is Your Partner in Innovation: Elevate your brand with cutting-edge connected packaging designs crafted by Oliver Inc. From concept to execution, our human-centric approach ensures your packaging not only stands out, but resonates with your audience.

Packaging is no longer just a physical matter. Digital technology has transformed the ways brands communicate and market to consumers, and that includes what is known as connected packaging.

Coupled with other futuristic packaging techniques such as smart packaging and augmented reality, connected packaging further cements your brand as innovative and fresh. Given how it bridges the physical with the digital, this forward-thinking type of packaging is also becoming an integral part of e-commerce packaging. 

Connected packaging gives you several ways to better engage with consumers and elevate your brand.

What Is Connected Packaging?

You’ve seen products with QR codes, hashtags, or barcodes on the packaging.

These extend the customer experience online, often with questionnaires, games, exclusive offers, or additional information. Connected packaging is designed to bridge your unboxing experience with digital interactions aimed at creating more immersive and memorable encounters with a brand. 

Given how ubiquitous smartphones are, connected packaging is becoming more standard across industries. Consumers almost expect there to be more to packaging than protecting and storing a product. They’ve become accustomed to brands interacting with them on social media, and anticipate any physical product they buy will connect in some direct way with the digital world.

Plain and simple: Consumers want more comprehensive experiences.

So how can brands take advantage of connected packaging?

Utilizing Connected Packaging to Elevate Your Brand

Connected packaging facilitates lots of creative marketing possibilities, suitable across most industries. Here are just a few avenues to consider. 

Gamification

Whether it’s offering consumers an easy link to simple games on a website dedicated to your product or a more advanced gamified campaign that extends throughout several months—such as McDonald’s popular Monopoly game, for example—connected packaging is a fun way to keep people engaging with you far beyond your primary product offering.

Gamification also helps optimize e-commerce packaging. 

Providing Additional Instructions

Some products lend themselves to many instructional caveats, or could benefit from giving consumers further information. These pair well with packaging inserts and other printed marketing collateral—with greater accessibility further enhancing the user experience.

For instance, food products benefit from a QR code that takes consumers to a website showing a collection of creative recipes to make using your product. Household tool products can connect to a digital library full of tutorials and innovative ways people are using them around their homes.

Another example: Capitalizing on this approach, SoaPen, a handsoap pen for kids, redesigned its packaging using a QR code to take people to a how-to video and web page elaborating on its social mission.

Social Media

Foster organic growth and extend the reach of your brand by encouraging consumers to share their stories on social media. A simple way to do so is to include a hashtag on your packaging.

For example, specialty outdoor retailer and consumer co-op REI includes #OptOutside on a wide variety of product packaging, encouraging its members to take pictures of themselves using the gear during their outdoor adventures. As a result, Instagram is flooded with images of outdoors enthusiasts sharing pictures of their REI gear while summiting mountains or biking down rocky trails.

This resonates strongly with consumers, while doing the seemingly impossible—bridging the digital world with the sometimes tech-adverse outdoors community.

Further Target Consumers

Connected packaging can be used to curate targeted experiences for consumers.

Utilize IP addresses (if desktops or laptops) or mobile locations (via smartphones) to guide consumers to digital platforms designed specifically for any given geographic region. 

This is as simple as directing consumers to a website in a different language, or something truly creative: Imagine a company that manufactures high-end headphones using connective packaging to generate a list of upcoming concerts performed in a local music venue. 

Or envision connected packaging that directs automotive car parts customers to a website with more information specific to the make and model of their vehicle, including fields to input their mileage and identify when they’re likely to need repairs or scheduled maintenance. 

(Variable data printing also helps you further target consumers.)

Interactive Maps

People love maps, so employ them in any number of ways with connected packaging. Appeal to the growing number of consumers concerned with sustainability who want brands to provide sustainable packaging.

For example, on top of visual cues highlighting sustainable materials, a QR code can be utilized to direct consumers to a map pinpointing precisely where these are sourced.

If you’re a food brand or restaurant, you might consider using connected packaging to show customers exactly where their coffee or chocolate is being harvested. Imagine how rewarding it would be for locally minded consumers to see where their food comes from, and interact with a map introducing them to the very farmers producing it.

Exclusive Content

Additional content and exclusive offers also facilitate further engagement. Invite consumers to scan a QR code for a special deal, or require them to input a website code printed on the packaging. It’s simple, but a great opportunity to go above and beyond consumer expectations and add a bit more value to their purchases. 

Connected packaging is a powerful avenue for brands to strengthen loyalty, delight and engage consumers, and create memorable experiences. Any blend of these options will elevate your brand and set it apart from the competition. 

Partner With Oliver for Connected Packaging Designs

Well-designed connected packaging begins with an experienced printing and packaging partner. Oliver’s expertise is trusted by pioneering brands across most consumer industries. We utilize top-of-the-line printing technology and a human-centric design approach. 

Our process is driven by empathy, which is why you’ll receive so many questions from us at the beginning of our collaboration. We want to understand what animates your brand and inspires your customers. Tell us your pain points, and we’ll deliver a connected packaging design that meets your requirements.

Proofing at Oliver is completely secure and conveniently accessible. Check projects online whenever it suits you—including soft proofs and 3D visualizations. That’s one of the major perks of partnering with a domestic printer. 

Our presence throughout the United States makes it convenient to visit in person to observe the progress of your project, at any time, at any one of several facilities nationwide.

Just as you take care in putting your best products forward, so do we with our packaging solutions. Your success is our success.  

Oliver Inc. is the nation's leading independent supplier of custom paperboard packaging solutions. Our advanced printing technology and steadfast commitment to excellence will elevate your next packaging design and brand. Contact us today to learn more.