Five questions with Jenny Stanley & Polytag

November 2024

In regular Q&A sessions, Jenny Stanley, Managing Director at Appetite Creative explores the key challenges, trends and solutions facing experts from across the advertising and packaging industry. Asking five key questions per conversation, Jenny will look to learn more about her interviewee, their career, clients and give them a final word.

This interview with Will Addy, Chief Commercial Officer at Polytag.

1: Name one big failure from your career? What did you learn? 

I was leading on some change delivery for sales systems, processes and best practice for a company with global offices. It’s fantastic working with different people with different backgrounds from different cultures, but time zones and long stretches between face-to-face meetings adds an additional layer of challenge to delivering change at scale.

The failure on my part was assuming an initial level of understanding after a week’s worth of training, coaching and delivery sessions for the senior leaders and managers for a CRM rollout, responsible for critical changes to the sales process and contracting. Despite weekly calls to check in on progress it became apparent, on my next in person visit, that the reported changes hadn’t been delivered or embedded. 

This delayed the entire change programme and required further sessions for all staff, a much closer inspection and checks to ensure the changes were rolled out, understood etc. It seems so obvious to me now and the lessons have stayed with me. Don’t assume anything, inspect what you expect and what gets measured gets managed. 

2: What are the questions you are most often asked by clients? 

What does Polytag do? How does your technology differ from other QR we might already see? 

Polytag is an enabling technology for circularity and connected packaging solutions. Our Digital Link QR codes, powered by GS1, help companies engage with their consumers directly. Sharing a specific product brand story, as well as unlocking further benefits from the depth of data available across the supply chain and POS. Our Invisible UV watermarks (tag and trace technology) unlock never before seen data about packaging lifecycles, as well as enabling advanced sortation.

3: What are the biggest challenges your clients are facing today?

Firstly, communicating directly with their consumers in crowded markets will forever be a challenge but hyper relevant and specific content to what’s being purchased/consumed is a differentiator.

Second, is the incoming legislation such as EPR with cost of recovery set to spike – businesses know how much they are putting on to the market but have little knowledge of what actually gets recycled – without that data there is little hope of being able to rebuke increased taxes or fees.

4: What is the next big thing or hot trend(s) you predict we’ll be facing in the next few months / year? 

Doesn’t everyone just answer the impact of AI for this question at the moment? I expect we will see Digital Deposit Return Schemes beginning to roll out globally, as well as the steady transition away from 1D to QR codes pick up pace. 

5: If you had a spare hour during the day, what would you do with it?

Hit the trails on my mountain bike. I love being out in nature and find a bike ride really helps with processing current challenges and is generally good thinking time.

Source: Appetite Creative

  Agency, Appetite Creative, Jenny Stanley, Opinion Piece, Polytag, Will Addy