Category Archives: Packaging

The Most Frustrating Thing In The World

The most frustrating thing in the world is not your mother-in-law, or job searching, or tuition debt. No, the most frustrating thing in the world is getting ketchup out of a glass bottle. Seriously, it ruins my week every time. Thank god we have MIT to fix this, or I’d need to be committed.

The bottle in the video above has been coated with an almost frictionless substance called LiquiGlide, that prevents even the tiniest bit of ketchup from remaining in the bottle. PhD candidate Dave Smith states that a million of pounds of food waste could be saved if every bottle or container was coated with this substance, meaning you could get every little last bit of mayonnaise out of the bottle.

The biggest challenge they faced was keeping the product FDA approved, which they could only do with a limited amount of materials, which they have patented the heck out of. But they’ve already seen results: recently LiquiGlide came in second place in MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship Competition. Not bad for a ketchup bottle.

What Sparks Our Fire: Solving that ketchup bottle problem and saving my sanity.

Do you think bottles and containers coated with this substance will make life easier?

Insert Obligatory Skynet Comment Here

A few days ago, Amazon announced that it would be starting a delivery drone service that would ostensibly revolutionize the delivery of packages ordered online. With the shopping frenzy beginning last week with Black Friday and continuing with Cyber Monday and other sale events up until Christmas Eve, FedEx, UPS, and the United States Postal Service will be hard pressed to get all the ordered packages to their recipients on time. Amazon Prime Air may be a solution to the shipping bottleneck, because they should only take about a half hour.

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However, this process is going to come with a whole host of problems. The fact of the matter is that these are basically unsecured, unmanned package delivery systems that are unproven and essentially without precedent. The FAA have yet to approve it, and there are multiple safety issues to consider. For instance, the drone is an octocopter, which means that if one rotor fails, the remaining seven can maintain flight. However, what if more than one fails? What if they all fail? Will that mean that at any time a ten-pound flying contraption carrying textbooks could fall from the sky? Already, Twitter is full of comments on how people who are good shots now get free stuff, and essentially the idea has become a of joke.

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In our opinion, the concept needs a lot of reworking before it is implemented, and it may not be an entirely safe or practical delivery method. It remains to be seen.

AmazonPrimeAir

What Sparks Our Fire: Thinking outside the box is what is needed to solve shipping issues. Just maybe not this way.

Would you want to have your packages air dropped?

Marc-eting 101: Activate Effectively

ActivateEffectively

We asked Canopy’s Managing Director, Marc Sampogna, “What is your #1 marketing tip that is both effective and profitable?” Find out what he had to say below.

The ability to paint the entire picture across every touch-point, activate it seamlessly and make it shareable will ultimately result in success and profitability for your brand. If you’re developing an ad campaign, how do you generate a conversation around it and optimize it across other applications? If you’ve developed a new website, how do you create an engagement strategy that elicits conversation and conversions? The answer, a strong “activation plan”, and it involves multiple items to make it work: SEO, social media, advertising or packaging for that matter. Develop a strategically sound plan that brings them all together, and broadcasts a consistent message. It’s an investment, but it will create loyalty, which results in profitability and results.

 

Go Ahead, Eat It!

EdibleWrapper

The last time you finished a bag of chips or some other tasty snack, you probably crumpled the bag unhappily in your hand and looked for a trash receptacle, or shoved it in your bag and found it later, probably with the same amount of unhappiness. Fortunately, there might soon be a delicious solution to your plastic problem: wrappers you can eat.

The project, called WikiCells, seeks to use “natural packaging” to keep foods fresh in an edible, nontoxic way. It has been speculated that this packaging could actually be used to season or flavor the food it protects, such as a fruity packaging for yogurt, or a chocolate membrane for hot chocolate. The possibilities are incredible, and may just be able to solve the plastic problem that has been plaguing our landfills.

What sparked our fire: The nature of which doctors are lending their expertise to help reduce our plastic waste problem.

How will the emerging edible wrapper technology effect the consumer packaged goods industry?

 

 

 

Some, privacy please!

digital privacy

Most Americans have at least one mobile device in which they send and receive data. With all of this data floating around, it is very easy for someone to steal your personal information in a matter of seconds. Now, you probably don’t care if someone reads a silly text from your friend. But how would you feel if a total stranger read a confidential email from a colleague? Or from your doctor?

Adam Harvey, a New York City based artist, has designed a mobile device accessory that can stop all signals. The OFF Pocket, a case for your cell phone, blocks WiFi, GPS and cellular signals making your device untraceable, unhackable and undetectable. The only major downside is you cannot send or receive any information while your device is in the case.

Today millions of people are tracked through their mobile devices, even when they’re not being used. The OFF Pocket allows you to completely disconnect while maintaining total control over your privacy. The accessory will prove most valuable when the phone is not being used, which is more often than you would expect! Think about it, how much time do you actually spend on a mobile device a day? The average American spends roughly an hour a day on their smartphone, so the remaining 23 hours could be spent protecting your information.

What sparked our fire: An innovative product that encourages and allows consumers to truly unplug.

Would you give up instantaneous connectivity for some privacy?

Enjoy!

-Canopy Team