Appealing To the Senses

Aromatic Packaging Is Just the Start Of Futuristic Sales Ploys

AriZona iced tea has spent millions of dollars creating its eye-catching packaging. It has also spent millions of dollars developing different flavors of tea.

Now the company is testing a way to bring the two together by embedding appealing aromas in the packaging itself -- specifically, inside the cap -- to improve the taste of its beverages and the drinker's experience.

AriZona Beverage Co. is at the forefront of a new wave of high-tech packaging in consumer products. As people increasingly ignore commercials and spread their attention across many types of media, traditional television, radio and print advertising is losing effectiveness, and marketers are looking for new ways to get noticed.

One promising way appears to be targeting as many of the five senses as possible via the package itself.

Soon, just strolling the aisles at a grocery, drug or big-box store could cause sensory overload. Manufacturers are spending more to design packages that blink, beep, yell and waft scents at shoppers. Though some companies have created paper-thin, flexible video displays and tiny speakers, aroma seems to be the biggest payoff in packaging, thanks to its powerful link to memory and emotion.

Companies are incorporating scents directly into plastic bags and bottles, so a consumer can smell shampoo or chocolate without opening the top. Newly developed scented ink, meanwhile, is allowing ads and catalogues to capture a consumer's attention with an unsuspecting whiff, using a technology beyond your father's scratch-'n'-sniff.

"Consumers have to be given a good reason to buy a product," said Chris Lyons, publisher of Package Design Magazine. "Certainly, knowing or having a sense of what it smells like can help that."

Other packaging innovations are underway, such as labels that change color to indicate ripeness of fruit or a temperature change. A disposable, self-heating cup (introduced last year with a line of hot coffee beverages by famed chef Wolfgang Puck) will soon be available with soups, tea and hot chocolate.

Coming down the road are computer chips embedded in packaging that can communicate with a shopper's PDA or cell phone to give additional product information. Miniature sound systems on boxes and bottles will give people spoken tips and ideas. And German electronics giant Siemens AG has developed a flat electronic display that can be applied to boxes like a label, allowing for tiny lights, miniature games or flashing messages.

"The idea behind it is to print on cereal boxes, for example, or anything like that, so when you go to the supermarket, your kids see some kind of blinking display. It catches your attention," said Till Moor, a spokesman for Siemens in Munich. He said the company's first customer for the technology -- which is unidentified for competitive reasons -- will start using it next year, and more widespread consumer applications will be seen in 2008.

The innovations are not without opposition. Some consumers bristle at the addition of aromas to printed material, though scented ink is far more subtle and less invasive than a typical perfume ad in a magazine.

And there are groups with privacy concerns trying to prevent manufacturers from using radio frequency identification technology (RFID), or what they call "spychips." Tiny RFID chips on packaging receive and send radio transmissions that can be used to track packages and, opponents say, consumers as well.