Free Ideas #11453
Rapidly explored thoughts, published in the open.
Stuart Wells at adidas, posted a thought on LinkedIn over the weekend — to help consumers navigate the unseen world of packaging ethics. The idea is simple — tag the products with colours so you can choose items which have recyclable packaging, non recyclable packaging, or zero-impact packaging (indeed many things don’t need packing at all).
Considered as an AR project, you could wander down the aisle seeing which products have more or less of an impact. Indeed — if it exists as a digital layer, you could switch between what type of impact you want to filter for — food miles, palm oil, company ethics, the possibilities are endless.
What would it take?
Open and accessible data — There are already examples of datasets which could be explored. EWG in the US created a BPA products list a few years ago. There’s RecycleYa in France. I expect there is no single dataset which enables this — so perhaps a call to arms on the FMCG business to start with, to create a database of the recyclability of their packaging. This has the added benefit of pointing the finger at manufacturers who are consistently red, and celebrating those who are increasingly green. Platforms like https://evrythng.com/ or eventually blockchain, will help in keeping track of the end to end processes which go to create these products. Arla have already built a Dairy Blockchain to track the milk from cow to shelf, and I expect there will be an increasing amount of data on end to end supply and distribution chains.
Pack Mapping — the vast wealth of visual data in a shopping aisle is a technical challenge — it’s one for humans too. So many often indistinguishable packs sit on shelves, and brands do everything they can to make their pack stand out — causing a visual cacophony, often to the point of overload. If you knew the existing location of products, you could render aisles in aggregate, and increase the definition of data as you get closer to products. We’re a way off being able to do this on the smartphone device, but theoretically it’s possible. You could augment the experience with location beacons which help the device understand where it is in store, to lighten the load on visual processing — but as a seamless experience at this stage, it’s probably not entirely feasible — but how about turning it on its head — and mapping only the items which are green, and the rest is de-facto red. It might help others add their data to the platform sooner so they’re no ‘de-listed’ in the AR experience.
So, prototype and piloting this?
One of the most common behaviours of any project which leverages new technology is to think that the technology is the answer — and frequently, there’s a faster and less nerdy way of getting started.
The beauty of this idea is helping customers to navigate to purchasing products which are doing better for the planet. Without any technology investment, any retail store could dedicate an aisle to products which are doing better. In fact, the ‘curated’ aisle, creates not only great visibility for those brands who are doing good things, but also creates a more rapid way of getting things you need in a single place. If you’re not in ’the good aisle’, you’re missing footfall.
It gives a great opportunity for the ‘own label’ products to stand front and centre too — and the retail gets most of the credit here for supporting and organising transparency and easier purchase — and if you are really cynical, you can trial it for a week on gondola ends, (although the smaller the test, the smaller the positive results you’ll find in contexts like this).
But let’s not forget the exciting AR version — as the design fiction of the future often gets PR coverage, and generates attention.
Creating a prototype version with a ‘single store’ setup which enables the technology to work in the best possible way to generate interest in the concept, combined with a physical retail implementation which people can then experience locally, and then a larger content ecosystem where people can find out more about how they can help to shift the status quo, and what the retailers or manufacturers are doing to also move forward — that’s a proper step in the right direction, and a powerful prototype which helps consumers take action, not just generate buzz.
All of this, however, requires everyone to buy into the foundation of why you’d want to do this — if the starting point is “let’s do something neat with technology”, you’ll end up with a dancing monkey. If the starting point is a better question like “how can we help our shoppers take decisions with less environmental impact?”, you’re opening up a larger area of enquiry and can do so much more than generating column inches in Retail Week.
This is what we do for people — help them explore the future, and then make it happen sooner and better. We’re independent, so our thinking is impartial, and we’re fluid-networked so our capabilities are infinite. If this is what we can do for free in 15 minutes after a “throw-away suggestion” (pardon the pun), imagine what we could do together with some proper thought and time.
