Brand Management - Security

Smart packaging touches many areas of packaging including food, beverage, and pharmaceutical. For pharmaceutical packaging in particular, there have been several advances in the use of smart packaging, specifically in the realm of patient compliance and patient interaction.

If it hasn’t happened to you, it likely has happened to someone you know...WRAP RAGE, the common name for heightened frustration resulting from the difficult and sometimes painful process of opening hard-to-remove packaging. MeadWestvaco Corporation (www.meadwestvaco.com) has developed a packaging solution to ease consumers’ fury and avoid the injurious struggle often associated with plastic clamshells. 

Top executives from leading U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturing companies will be attending this two-day conference tailored to maximize knowledge sharing and networking among pharmaceutical packaging and labeling professionals.

Smart packaging takes on many forms and purposes. Some smart packaging communicates to end users via thermochromic inks that change color with temperatures. Other types will remind patients to take their medicine or combine communication with functionality in cases like self-cooling beer kegs or self-heating soups and coffees. One area where smart or intelligent packaging has practically become a necessity is in the area of brand security/authentication. One way to make packaging for brand protection smart is employing RFID. According to a -NanoMarkets study, “Smart Packaging Markets: 2006-2013,” printable and chip-based RFID tags will be consumed by smart packaging to the tune of $1.1

Differentiating a brand is critical to its success in the marketplace. In some way, shape, or form, a product needs to stand out from its competition—to be distinctive in such a way that gives a customer a reason to buy it. There are many aspects that come into play with brand differentiation including the product attributes themselves, product positioning, packaging, and the overall marketing message that pulls it all together. It is also a very dynamic endeavor, requiring a continual awareness of market trends that can provide opportunities for product enhancements. One thing is for sure, in most cases, distinctiveness doesn’t last for

Counterfeiting, diversion, and contamination of products are big, “burning platform” problems. The results of a recent Purchasing Magazine survey show that 42 percent of buyers consider counterfeiting a “serious problem,” and 44 percent report falling victim to counterfeiting. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates counterfeiting costs brand owners $200 billion annually. The food industry was hit hard by a series of recent contamination issues. The U.S. spinach market was down about 40 percent a year after E. coli killed three and sickened 200. A recent survey of U.S. households found that 88 percent of consumers would buy a traceable product

ROCHESTER, N.Y.—Desirable, expensive, and rare, premium Canadian ice wine is increasingly being exploited by counterfeiters whose actions damage the revenues and reputation of this emerging product. Kodak, with packaging provider Stanpac, will demonstrate the KODAK TRACELESS System for Anticounterfeiting during the Uncorked Grape & Wine Industry Conference & Tradeshow at Niagara College in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, May 27-28. Attendees will see how this easy to implement authentication system is being applied to ice wine bottles via a silk screen method. “The wine industry in Ontario offers world renowned ice wine that is envied the world over,” said Murray Bain, Vice President, Marketing, Stanpac, Inc.

The packaging market is certainly going through a period of change—evolutionary, not revolutionary. Macro ­issues outside the control of even leading companies are causes for concern and bringing pressures to bear on the sector. Currency exchange rates complicate and inhibit international trade, particularly with the weakening U.S. dollar. Retailer competition in the consumer market is intense. Globalization has become a reality for many companies and, in some cases, an imperative for continuing success. For the packaging industry supply chain, the complexities are also complicated by high raw material costs and an increasing choice of technologies available to the brand manufacturer to package, identify, and

Brand protection is hot and getting hotter. A brand’s equity needs to be protected at all costs. It is sometimes developed over decades, can impart implicit trust, and can be lost in a matter of days, if not hours. Some major consumer products companies are getting first-hand exposure to the ramifications of what can happen. Mattel is taking a beating with multiple recalls involving its Fisher-Price and Barbie brands, and Colgate-Palmolive’s Colgate toothpaste has had a scare due to counterfeit products on the shelf. Companies have an exposure with any negative events impacting their brands whether they are responsible for the problems or not—and they

“Counterfeit Colgate Toothpaste Found” is the headline for a June 14 U.S. Food and Drug Administration press release warning that toothpaste with packaging resembling a Colgate product found its way into dollar-type discount stores in four states in the United States. Consumers were lucky this time around —packages were readily identifiable as fake so they could discontinue use or dispose of the product immediately. The counterfeit labels included several misspellings, and stated that the product had been manufactured in South Africa—a location Colgate does not use for manufacturing toothpaste. This is only one example of how a brand’s identity was stolen and reproduced to