Collaboration, Color, and Interactive Print in Digital Packaging

By Allee Bruce and Kalie VanDewater

Despite it being the third and final day of the Digital Packaging Summit, the roster of valuable education didn’t wane. Whether it was in the general sessions on managing multiple stakeholders within packaging projects and coding capabilities like QR and RFID, or the additional case study sessions and 1:1 meetings, attendees and sponsors came with the eagerness and engagement they had on day one.

Brand Stewards: How Printers and Prepress Firms Can Work Together

In a session titled “Driving Successful Digital Packaging Projects with Multiple Stakeholders,” Packaging Impressions Editor-in-Chief Linda Casey chatted with David Olberding, CEO, Olberding Brand Family, and Elle Morris, chief marketing officer at the company.

Olberding’s 105-year-old prepress firm manages graphics for major brands like Hershey and Red Bull ensuring color consistency across multiple printers. Morris brings a marketing and branding background with extensive knowledge in consumer packaged goods (CPG).

Speaking about the demands of color management, Olberding said it’s not a plug-and-play scenario. “We just don't run profiles and bring some charts in ... we want to noodle it, make it perfect,” he added.

Olberding’s team aims to be a brand steward for clients. The goal is to ensure color matches on the shelf, no matter the substrate. To do this, it partners with printers who know the inks and colors and how those lay and display on various substrates.

And color is just one aspect, Olberding noted — images also need to be considered. For example, the baby pictured on Pampers packaging needs to look the same on a carton, label, and bag. The same goes for the peanut butter cup on a Reese’s wrapper.

To ensure color is consistent on shelf, Morris says prepress being included in project kick-off meetings can go a long way. This can mitigate situations where design firms hand off packaging that, in the end, isn’t feasible, which can cause tension between agencies and prepress firms.

“As time has moved on, everybody got wiser, and the prepress partners — at least for the bigger companies — are almost always in the room, because color has become a huge, huge topic,” Morris said.

In the end, prepress firms like Olberding want to help printers be brand stewards as well.

"Our job is to be as neutral as we can,” he added. “We’ve got to make the printer look good, even though they're not our customers. The brand's our customer. But if the printer fails, we're failing. We're really working with the printer to say, ‘Hey guys, you know we're getting these press runs back, and you need to fix this or do that, or run this up or run this down.”

Marco Boer (left), conference co-chair and vice president of IT Strategies, discusses emerging coding protocols and mandates with Corey Daugherty (center), head of business development at Flowcode, and Jason Rambler, director of strategic innovation at Avery Dennison. | Credit: Packaging Impressions

The Role of Interactive Print

In the afternoon, Marco Boer, conference co-chair and vice president of IT Strategies, hosted the session entitled “Decoding Opportunities in the New Standards: An Interactive Discussion About Evolving Package & Label Coding Protocols & Mandates,” which dove head first into the rise in coding protocols impacting the packaging and label industry.

One of the up-and-coming technologies that will affect converters is QR codes, and Corey Daugherty, head of business development at Flowcode, provided some insight.

Flowcode was founded in 2019, and early on in testing, it learned two things:

People know how to scan a QR code.
The conversion rate for brands was much higher with Flowcodes than through digital channels.

“The intentionality of scanning a QR code is really what led us to creating Flowcode.com as a self-service QR management platform that really focuses on design, data privacy, and in recent years, about the conversion experience — not just about the scan, but really the value that sits behind it,” said Daugherty.

Not only do QR codes on packaging serve to connect brands with consumers, but they will become essential in creating a “digital identity” for packages.

Currently, the standard UPC barcode — and EAN codes in Europe — on CPG items can only store basic data about a product. However, GS1 has developed Sunrise 2027, bringing more information through two-dimensional barcodes like Flowcode. Because of this, Daughtery said QR codes will serve as both a GS1-compliant code and a consumer engagement channel.

While this likely won’t happen for several years, the 2027 benchmark is intended for EV batteries and industrial applications. CPG products will be targeted in 2030, at which point they will need digital identification.

In addition to serving as a channel between consumers and brands, Jason Rambler, director of strategic innovation at Avery Dennison, indicated that these codes will help with labor and efficiency issues.

“If you think about a retail store today, they're spending a lot of operational hours to understand where their inventory levels are.” Rambler said. “… There's really a focus on, how do I get that labor efficiency out of the store, just like we've seen at self checkout as well — the same push to try to drive down some of those labor costs.”

According to Rambler, brands are now in the process of testing out GS1-compliant codes.

“They don't know how to do this, and they're looking for expertise and they're looking for partners,” he emphasized. “We're in the active pilots. We just went through a pilot recently as Avery Dennison and GS1 with a small business to deploy a digital link onto a package for retail. … I would get folks involved — go test, go learn a bit about this, and get involved. The opportunities are out there.”

Regardless of the digital benefits this technology will bring to brands and consumers, Rambler said print will always be important because “brands are always going to be very interested in how they are showing up on a shelf.”

“From a consumer engagement standpoint,” Daughtery added, “the more the marketing folks within a brand understand the value that their product packaging can bring, and all of the ways that they can take all of their brand power that they're doing [through] those different channels, and bring it in a dynamic way to their package. That focus can only be good for print, in my mind.”

Conference Co-Chairs Marco Boer, vice president of IT Strategies, and Linda Casey, editor-in-chief of Packaging Impressions, discuss their takeaways from three days of education. | Credit: Packaging Impressions

High-Level Points

To wrap up all that was covered during the three-day summit, Casey and Boer shared some quick highlights:

Remember, economic and regime changes take time, so don’t expect changes soon or interest rates to reduce.
Aim for increases in productivity to increase profit.
Brands are aware of digital printing — be a steward for them.
Sustainability is about people, planet and profit.
Hold off on investing in carbon offsets, as it’s not the greatest use of resources.
Sustainability mandates continue to form and change — keep an eye on regulations and the Alliance’s lobbying work.
The shift from labor-intensive to capital-intensive industries underscores the need for regular software investments.
Economic outlooks show modest growth in 2025 with no signs of a recession.

Outside of the main presentations, attendees once again met with vendors in the segment-based case study sessions and the 1:1 meeting zone. Additionally, they had the opportunity to learn about other segments of interest during breakout sessions focused on labels, corrugated and flexible packaging, and cartons.

After the final sessions of the day, attendees and vendors networked with new and old connections during a cocktail reception and dinner. The night concluded with an awards ceremony (see below) highlighting the best case study presentations, the company attendees said is one to watch, and the most engaged attendees, as well as entertainment provided by comedian Heath Hyche of The Heath Show.