Get smart: intelligent packaging technologies are quickly commercializing. But if you don't "get smart" on how they can benefit your brand, you risk getting left behind.(BRANDING REPORT)

Flexible Packaging, August, 2007 by Tingas, Pauline

In Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, set in the year 2054, Tom Cruise walks into a Gap store and a virtual salesperson emerges to ask how his "selection of tank tops worked out". As he passes a mall corridor, billboards call out his name. Even at home, his cereal box "comes to life" with cartoon characters dancing and singing when he touches the carton.

If you think these are simply visions of a future time, you are wrong. Consider that, in 2003, Germany's Metro Group launched the Future Store to test new retail technologies. In this grocery concept store, there are smart shelves alerting the staff to replenish supplies; always-up-to-date electronic shelf labels; 3-D displays targeting different customer groups with various ads at different times of the day;...