Crown Packaging partners with Evrythng IoT firm to digitalize its F&B cans

The news was announced by Andy Perrink product marketing director, Evrythng, at AIPIA’s (Active & Intelligent Packaging industry Association), fifth annual conference in Amsterdam this week (November 14-15).​

'Born Digital'

“We have secured a global partnership with Crown Packaging, digitalizing cans at source in the manufacturing space to track them throughout their entire product cycle, any F&B metal packaging. The concept is called ‘Born Digital’ with serialized codes to track them​,” he said. 

“Evrthng is an IoT smart products platform where we take physical assets and give them a digital identity to track products throughout the supply chain and consumers can interact with a brand’s products through their smart phones​.” ​

Earlier at the congress, Andy Hobsbawm, co-founder, CMO, Evrthng, presented a seminar on ‘Who owns your packaging, your data and your customers?’. 

He said digital technology was responsible for 22% of global GDP last year and the impact on value creation is enormous. 

“How companies harness this is critical to their success,” ​said Hobsbawm. “Who controls the products, resulting data, and connection with customers is not as straightforward as we might imagine​. 

“The idea of digital transformation is ubiquitous now, I believe across all industries, all boards and CEOs are facing the realization that the digital technology train is arriving within their sector and it will be powering disruptions and change the markets they operate in​.” 

Web connected world

He added, the value of a product today is by how many things it can connect to because we live in a web connected world. 

According to Hobsbawm, companies need to be aggressive with the way they target consumers via digitalization such as; tags on a product, inventory management, product scan, brand protection and consumer engagement and firms including Google, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb are the leaders at this. 

“There are a range of technologies that allow different types of products to connect, previously fridges, electronics, now NFC sensors, Bluetooth, RFID, QR codes, because everybody has phones in their pocket this is the hidden infrastructure, there are a whole range of ways products can talk to the cloud and become intelligent​,” he added. 

Taking the example of DiscoveryHealth - which rewards customers based on their lifestyle - he can envision a situation where a cereal manufacturer partners with a firm like this, and people get rewarded for eating their cereal. They could extract information from data on their packaging going into the Cloud and partnering with a third party such as DiscoveryHealth. 

He said Kevin Plank, the CEO, chairman and founder of Under Armour claims  ‘data is the new oil’. 

“Companies like Google and Amazon are relentless about data. They apply it to get personal to the customer, whether it’s through furniture, home goods or fashion. Amazon is now moving into consumer packaged goods, and according to the Wall Street Journal will expand its private label offerings from food to diapers​,” added Hobsbawm. 

Snickers (Mars)

“Manufacturers need to think like Amazon, Google, UBER, not to ‘do digital but be digital’. Amazon uses its personal assistant ECHO an interface between digital and the consumer, this is only going to become more prevalent in the future and voice activated​.” 

He said Dan Burdett, global brand director, Snickers (Mars) has made reference to this by saying: ‘in the past, we along with other companies, have fallen into the trap of allowing data and information to be held by third parties’.’ 

“Customer relationships from data is where the data is,” ​said Hobsbawn. “Turn your products into media channels and service delivery points where you instrument what happens to your product. If you don’t do that: other companies can do it on your behalf.​ 

“Going forward: As things transform around you change, you have to conform, some companies do not succeed when transformation changes their industry​. 

"Companies that lead and innovate - ie the early movers - benefit commercially​.”