Using insights to inspire innovation and design stand-out shelf appeal

Avery Dennison’s new M_use platform is providing insights that impact material innovation and product design, writes Amy White, the company’s global vice president of brand and communications.
Avery Dennison’s new M_use platform is providing insights that impact material innovation and product design, writes Amy White, the company’s global vice president of brand and communications.

Understanding the ecosystem in which you operate and using insights to drive innovation in not only product, but also services, is critical for any company to differentiate and add value in the short, medium and long term. 

As a materials science company founded on a breakthrough innovation, ecosystem connectivity and insights gathering have continued to be an important activity at Avery Dennison. As a company working to solve material challenges, across multiple industries around the world, being aware of what is impacting consumers, manufacturers and brand owners is critical to ongoing success. 

Launching M_use has been a response to that need to define, discuss and share conversations around insights that impact material innovation, as well as product and service design. Working with future forecasters, neuroscientists, designers, converters and brand owners is enabling us to not only discuss what is important today – but also what is coming and what that means for us across the industry. 

An example is the topic of sustainability. In our recent article produced with The Future Laboratory, ‘Does limited lifespan packaging have a future?’, we look at the rise of alternative types of plastic and explore current and future possibilities of plastics. We also draw attention to the fact that today only 9 percent of plastics are recycled. As a company this drives us to focus on three areas – increasing the amount of recycled content in our products, increasing the recyclability of plastic packaging and building a global system of recycling for used label materials. The insights that we have, and continue to discover, lead us not to focus simply on future plastics but to really play a key role in increasing the percentage of plastic recyclability. 

Consumer insights 
Consumer insights also continue to have huge importance – perhaps even more so today, when shopping is more complex and continues to be reinvented. Consumers expect a seamless and functional retail experience, with the ability to interact with brands and buy products and services easily, through a variety of channels. It’s all about ensuring the shopping experience is of a similar standard, irrespective of where it’s being delivered. Simply put, consumers want to buy something when they want, where they want, how they want, and they want to experience it in a unique way. 

This means that brands and retailers need to rethink their supply chains and shopping experiences – and in turn that requires their suppliers of materials and technology, as well as converters, to innovate to match that need. Intelligent labeling that enables products to have a unique digital identity, thereby improving supply accuracy and flexibility, is one of the solutions that can ensure that shopping is frictionless for consumers. 

Added to this desire for frictionless shopping is an increased consumer expectation of trust. One of the recent M_use articles, ‘What’s in a label? Blockchain and the future of food and drink packaging’, highlights that almost half (48 percent) of consumers feel that they do not know enough about a product despite reading the label (source: Label Insight). And in 2018, 75 percent of consumers said they would be willing to switch brands if another offered them more in-depth product information beyond the label, up from 39 percent in 2016. A majority (69 percent) of consumers want retailers to be more transparent about their sustainability efforts (sources: Label Insight/Food Marketing Institute/Hartman Group). Combining blockchain and RFID enables a greater transparency of information to be shared with consumers evoking a higher sense of trust. 

Shelf appeal 
The need for increased shelf appeal remains a critical factor of successful packaging design. As such, not all of the insights we are gaining through our ecosystem collaboration and research lead to technology solutions – many point to innovation in materials science and product design. Our recent collaboration with Mind Insights, a neuro-marketing agency, is helping us to understand consumer reactions to both material choice and label design. In the first report of the series, recently launched on M_use, we were able to uncover insights on how different facestock materials and design choices affect consumers’ perceptions and buying behavior in the wine and spirits segment. 

Our second report, due to be launched in September, will analyze the relationship between texture of a label and the actual experience of the wine. These insights are not just fascinating, but they also lead us to make very specific additions to our materials portfolio to enable designers, brands and converters to choose facestocks that will augment their label and product design. 

Finally, we are also seeing an increased expectation for convenience that is not just related to the ways in which consumers shop, as covered earlier in the article, but also in how they consume and use products. According to LEK Consulting’s 2019 Brand Owner Packaging Study, 75 percent of brand owners surveyed say they expect to increase spending on packaging over the coming year. Of particular note, 57 percent say they are developing packaging that is easier to open and 51 percent say they are working on more single-serve packaging. 

Solutions such as reclosure technology are already responding to this need by enabling consumers to easily open and close packaging, and keep products fresh for longer. But as the expectation increases, so does the impact to label and packaging design. 

In a recent interview with Wolf Viergever, the former global manager of innovation at Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), we learned about four factors driving smaller wine packaging enabling consumers to have single servings in more lightweight packaging: ‘Opinions on the perfect wine bottle volume vary around the globe based on regional recommended serving size, wine culture and wine quality. However there’s a growing trend, according to Wolf, with consumers who want smaller packaging. The traditional 750ml glass bottle is too large for one serving, especially for high value wines.’

This expectation for convenience is not limited to food and drink. In partnership with the Future Laboratory, we are currently researching the need for convenience and accessibility in the beauty, home and personal care industry, which has some unique challenges that we need to be ready to solve.