It’s a short question: How is technology used in packaging? But when you’re talking about AI, AR, and VR, there’s opinions and facts and a lot in between. And that question turned into an hour and forty minute conversation with Leo Chao, Zenpack’s Creative Director, and a raw transcript that reached over 15,000 words.
Obviously there’s a lot that could go into the discussion, like the fact that the cloud has a bigger carbon footprint than the airline industry. Or the vast amounts of water required to cool data centers that run all these technologies.
But this isn’t a question of whether these technologies are inherently bad or good, helpful or distracting, but the role they play or will play in packaging. After all, everyone has opinions, like the roomful of SXSW goers that booed a pro-AI talk.
(Although those questions are certainly here. Considering OpenAI disbanded its forward-thinking safety team, and one of the inventors of AI thinks we’ll have a Skynet situation on our hands sometime soon, these will likely be bigger questions than how to use AI in packaging. But until then, we’ll focus on packaging because that’s what we know.)
Chao started the chat philosophically from the get-go: “Language is probably the world’s most powerful technology.”
Rather than lumping all technology together, Chao thinks a better term is ‘digital tools,’ as that’s really what we’re talking about combining with traditional packaging.
So in that case, how are digital tools like AI, AR, and VR being integrated into packaging? Let’s take them one by one. But first, Chao touched on the history of connected packaging.
Connected Packaging: Where It Started and Where It’s Going
If you’re like me, and think, what is connected packaging? Is that just slapping a URL on the side of a box? It turns out, you’re right. Or at least, that’s how it started.
“I don’t know who came up with [connected packaging],” Chao said. “I always thought it was kind of, uh, unfortunate that it’s used because it creates a lot of confusion. People don’t really understand it. It literally means you put your link on it so it connects to a website or a digital page. I think that’s the first connected packaging.”
Then along came the QR code, which can take you not just to a website these days, but an app or almost any type of digital content. And one day it may take us to a metaverse-type, VR space. But the next frontier in connected packaging, after QR codes, are NFC chips (near-frequency communication).
Rather than needing to print a QR code on the side of a box, a tiny chip is added to the packaging. Customers can wave their phone over the chip, or tab it, as the lingo goes, and be taken directly to any kind of digital content a brand produces, whether that’s an app, a website, or a special club only for purchasers of the product.
Chao referenced the K-Pop band BTS, which has a drink with NFC chips embedded in the packaging. After activating the chip, customers are taken to a special fan page where they can collect points and earn golden tickets to special concerts. They also get exclusive videos made just for purchasers.
Going beyond the biggest band in the world though, Chao said Zenpack is exploring using NFC chips for a coffee brand, so customers can be taken directly to content that tells the story of each small scale farmer that grew the beans they’re drinking.
Connected packaging started as a sales activity, simply replacing those cards or flyers with special offers that used to be inserted into packaging. But with content like what BTS is creating for fans, or what coffee brands are communicating about the farmers they work with, there is obviously a lot of room to drive customer engagement.
Other uses for connected packaging, whether through a QR code or NFC chip, have been less sales related and more user-centric, such as expanding what a customer can do with a product or trying to be more sustainable. Examples of this include moving a user manual—something customers often only need once and can sometimes require pages and pages of printing—from a physical asset to a digital one. Or, in the event of buying a new cooking pan, taking customers to a recipe page.
Of course, “more sustainable” is a matter of trading one thing for another. In the case of using an NFC chip in a corrugated box, reduced printing comes at the cost of using metal to make the chips, then requiring it to be sorted and removed at a recycling center.
While sales have always been the name of the game, helping customers enjoy a product a little bit better is proving to be a great marketing force behind all this connected packaging we see today.
But what is it connecting to? AR is one such technology.
Augmented Reality in Packaging
AR, or augmented reality, has already been used in packaging. Long before Apple put out its Vision Pro, or anyone else released a pair of techy glasses, brands were playing with the idea of making packaging come to life through a smartphone screen.
Chao said the most famous example is probably the wine label 19 Crimes. To activate the AR feature, a customer waves their phone across the packaging and the phone detects a key. The key could be anything that’s not generic, such as a QR code or a flower. The key then opens an app or webpage on the customer’s phone, and looking through their phone, it looks like the packaging has come to life.
“The label starts talking to you, like the newspapers in Harry Potter,” Chao said. “And the packaging is talking through your phone. If you look at the screen on your phone, it looks like the box is animated. It’s a funny experience at first, but now—that came out 7 or 8 years ago. Everyone thought it was going to be the future, but it just ended up being a gimmick.”
While Chao said that 19 Crimes’ use of AR, like the coffee farmer stories mentioned above, does an excellent job of using technology to solidify branding, the technology as a whole is limited in terms of packaging use.
“AR packaging is on the level of adding a light or a video box,” Chao said. “It’s really just a stimulation of the senses.”
Because it’s stimulating, and feels almost real, Chao said this creates a sense of magic from the packaging. Marketers can embrace AR as a tool because customers then share it on social media and promote the brand and the product. This gives the packaging new life after it’s done its job of delivering the product safely to the customer.
Chao said that he envisions a day where a store will have mostly just plain white boxes, and people will be seeing different content on different boxes through their AR glasses, which will also likely be smaller, lighter, and more common.
“It makes sense for everyone,” he said. “It makes sense for production because you don’t need to print as much. We’re probably more sustainable in some ways. I don’t know how sustainable it is overall because we’ll be wearing all those glasses, but as far as packaging goes, it would help.”
Marketers would also love it, as they could segment content for different customers. And brick-and-mortar retailers would likely be on board because AR packaging would add a notch to their win column in the competition with online shopping.
However, all this segmentation and use of worldview-enhancing glasses would likely change physical interactions. Do people want that? Do you want that?
It’s a good question, but not the one that Chao is focused on. Because as he says, it’s coming regardless.
“I don’t want to be the last one who understands how to put AR on my packaging. I want to be the first one to know how that works.”
The short of it is, packaging is already using AR, by both big brands and small. They’re adapting, they’re learning how to connect with customers, how to drive more sales, and how to make the experience or product better in some way. Not everyone will need to catch up, or even learn—and 10 years down the line that may be a way to differentiate—but those who want to look modern will need to experiment.
Does Virtual Reality Have Any Need for Packaging?
That really becomes the question. What good is physical packaging in a virtual space?
It’s hard to envision packaging in a space that has no need for it. Especially one that may never actually come to fruition, considering Meta’s metaverse has lost almost $50 billion in the last 10 years. It seems that people might not even want it.
But let’s start with an easier question: How does VR mesh at all with packaging today?
“VR probably isn’t there yet,” Chao said. “I don’t see how it’s integrating with packaging.”
Okay, back to the philosophical one then. Is there a need for packaging when a product doesn’t need to be protected, such as during shipping?
The short answer is no, but it could be something else entirely. Chao speculated that in a virtual reality, packaging could be a song or some kind of entertaining sequence. It will likely still exist in some way because packaging, outside of protecting a product, is a kind of weird thing.
There’s a human desire to unwrap things. It’s also not natural: We spend so much time wrapping something and then someone else breaks it open. But we continue to do that. Chao says this isn’t a cultural thing—it’s a human nature thing. It’s in our genes and every culture is part of it. Protecting food, discovery, the element of surprise—there are many reasons, but we all do it.
“It goes way back to when someone used some leaves and wrapped things with it,” he said. “Or wrapped a nice gift in some pretty things they found in nature. I believe that was the first packaging…When physical boundaries aren’t there anymore, maybe we found the true meaning of packaging? Haha. What does it really mean to us? Is it even necessary at that point? That gets pretty philosophical.”
But in a virtual reality where there are no physical boundaries, philosophy might be all we have. Chao thinks people will hate not having something to open, even inside a computer. There will still be some sort of unwrapping, revealing. But until any of us spend any actual time in there, it’s hard to say what that reveal will be. A song seems as good a guess as any.
Packaging—beyond the basics of protection, logistics, etc.—is an emotional product. It’s why, using Chao’s example, people used leaves to wrap gifts. It’s also why people make unboxing videos today. There’s an excitement attached to it.
And that excitement, along with protection and logistics, will remain with packaging because for the moment, it’s staying in a physical space. There will always be people featured in articles who long to live digitally, but it’s unlikely that the majority of us want that, nor is the technology anywhere close to making that happen yet.
Is AI Taking Over the World, or at Least Packaging?
Fresh off a week at SXSW, Chao saw his fair share of artificial intelligence-related discussions. But at the end of the day, that’s exactly what it is: artificial.
“AI is not as smart as we think it is,” Chao said. “It’s not a human. You can’t treat it like a human. You can’t expect it to be like a human.”
One talk he attended featured researchers from Carnegie Institute. The goal was to interview healthcare workers to see how AI could make them more productive. But everything the nurses and doctors asked for—AI can’t do.
Chao noticed there were three groups of people regarding AI: some who fear it, some who feel neutral about it, and some who love it and jump-in head first. The last group also projects a vibe that those who don’t adapt will be left behind.
“I think that’s part of the fear, too. That most people have that left behind feeling.”
But people are already using AI almost every day. Amazon’s Alexa is a good example of it. It’s just that people don’t use it the way it was intended.
“They built it because they hoped people would talk to it and buy things through it. No one does that. Alexa is basically a Spotify player. Something like 90% of people just use it to play Spotify.”
So while technology is created as ‘this is what it can do,’ we’re still finding out how people will actually use it. And within packaging, it’s no different.
Chao says it will replace some of the things they do regarding packaging design. This involves repetitive tasks like changing dimensions and mocking up dielines. Rather than requiring three measurements, a conversation with an AI will likely be the result. But it also won’t be much different than the current process with dieline software.
“We call it automation, hehe,” he said. “We love that—no one hates automation. But most people think AI is—it’s crazy.”
Chao says that while most people think AI is a powerful tool, it’s just that it can do easy, repetitive tasks well. And it’s these repeatable, non expert-type tasks where AI will make its mark on packaging, at least in the short term.
With the right training, AI could also help with sustainability in packaging. Because there are so many variables, it can be hard for designers to understand quickly what might be the best material choice for a project.
However, Chao said that regarding the graphic design side of packaging, people will likely be greatly affected by AI. Sure, there are people putting out complete branding guides for $500, but the quality isn’t good, he said. And yes, there will always be people who want fast and cheap—they get what they pay for—but the speed that AI operates at will decrease the number of jobs for other designers. More low quality stuff, but fewer people needed to make it.
“What it’s really going to come down to is people who have taste. To be able to distinguish what is better or good or great. That’s going to be more valuable. AI can’t teach you taste. Or what is actually good design. At least not yet anyway. Right now you still have to learn that for yourself.”
One idea that Zenpack has been playing around with is turning their swatch book—a book showing examples of different materials—over to an AI. Chao thinks this could make it easier for customers to navigate, and could allow them to ask questions about the most suitable materials for their projects.
Even this use, though, would require investments to train the AI with Zenpack’s knowledge and database.
Without expertise, AI is flashy, but it’s still just a tool. And with countless examples of AI technology making mistakes and costing businesses money—sometimes into the millions—it’s still good to make sure those tools are handled by experts in their field.
The Humans Behind the Technology
No matter what the benefits of technology to packaging are, right now we still need real people to design it. And some of the realest people can be found at Zenpack. Drop us a line if you think packaging should be made by people who understand how to handle it.
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