Five questions with Jenny Stanley and AIPIA

February 2025

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 is with Andrew Manly, Communications Director at the AIPIA. 

1: Name one big achievement from your career? What are you most proud about achieving? 

Over such a long career in packaging that is not an easy question to answer. I suppose in Phase 1 it was the establishment of the PPMA in the UK and the launch and growth of the PPMA Show. Both the Association and Show continue to grow and prosper today. Not bad after 38 years! In Phase 2 the establishment of AIPIA and see it grow into a major force in the Smart Packaging sector, to become THE Smart Packaging hub

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

Today it’s about how to leverage Smart Packaging to improve/benefit their business. Why should we be doing it? What is the ROI? In the beginning it was: What is this Smart Packaging stuff (the potential end users) and How do we get the message about these technologies out there? (Smart packaging providers). Also, of course, Is Smart Packaging Sustainable? 

Lately it’s much more about How do we use Smart Packaging to engage with our customer base and build a closer link with them? There are plenty more questions they should be asking about using the data, compliance, safety, etc. And each segment or regional market has its own priorities. That is why AIPIA exists, to provide some clarity.

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

From the Smart Packaging providers perspective, it’s about overcoming some of the ‘fog’ created by the rush to sustainability and being able to show the customer (whether that is a Brand Owner, Retailer, Packaging Provider or Logistics company) how profoundly these technologies can positively impact on their business and meet some of the challenges (DPP is an example) they face. 

The end users are getting more savvy, but their internal structures do not make it easy to share data – and connected packaging provides A LOT of data – or make quick decisions on innovation. 

There are also ROI and ESG issues to consider and the cost of implementation at scale. It’s happening, but more slowly than it should be. Brands and Retailers need to get more involved in the conversation and spend less time worrying about paper straws! Regulations will play a significant role, but a lot of innovation is customer driven these days.

4: What one improvement or change would you like to see the wider industry (advertising, packaging etc) make in the next 12 months that will have a positive impact on the wider industry ecosystem? 

I think a more balanced approach to the whole issue of sustainability is required. We have seen many major Brands rowing back on their commitments to achieve this and that sustainable target by such and such a date, as they have come to realise these are simply unachievable. Pandering to the lobbyists and politicians has just brought odium upon them as they find the business case is simply not ‘sustainable’!  

Of course, sustainability and recycling are important and must be vigorously pursued, but not to the exclusion of all other avenues of innovation – which can often improve or enable sustainable performance. So proper ‘joined up’, dare l say, connected thinking is needed!

5: What’s the legacy you’d like to leave the industry?

Well l am pretty proud of the PPMA and AIPIA as legacy organisations. But more widely, as l entered the packaging sector as a bright and shiny your salesman in 1987 l soon came to realise that most people regarded packaging as a bloody nuisance and had no idea what its benefits were/are. This has been compounded in recent years by the outcry against plastics and packaging ‘waste’. If, in a small way, Smart Packaging can change that misconception and make people realise the value of protecting and preserving the products they buy (as well as promoting them in a competitive world) then l would feel we have achieved something. Not there yet, but maybe it’s a beginning.

Source: Appetite Creative

  Agency, AIPIA, Andrew Manly, Appetite Creative, Interview, Jenny Stanley