Five questions with Jenny Stanley and TK Packaging Consulting

September 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 Ton Knipscheer, Packaging Consultant at TK Packaging Consulting.

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

My career started in 1979 and has been mostly in the packaging industry. There are two achievements, which spring to mind and from which it’s impossible to choose. However, when bringing it back to the core, both achievements focus on one specific quality; being able to read and understand the market and adapt. I’ve had to turn around packaging companies, stop them from going under and find new markets for their products. The other time was when I wanted to make a significant change in my own career. I’ve had to reinvent myself on more than one occasion.

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

When selling in the packaging industry, the most common question was why this product was so expensive. Some people can’t see the forest for the trees and miss the bigger picture. I’ve always been very privileged to be active in product categories that at first were more expensive than standard products. However, their added value always offered a better return. Once you’re able to find the pain points of the customer and address them openly, the rest was relatively easy.

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

There are a lot of challenges with the supply chain. Other issues include: 

• Technological acceleration
• Changing customer behaviour
• Economic disruption
• Regulatory pressure
• Geopolitical instability
• Consumer Say-Do-Gap

However, I believe the biggest challenge is that contrary to what a growing number of people believe, there are still no simple and painless solutions for the problems that we face.

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

I’m convinced that it would be a great improvement if the stakeholders in the advertising and packaging industry don’t forget the consumer. Most brand owners who make a change to more sustainable packaging, forget to bring the consumer on board. Without explaining prominently on the pack that the pack should be disposed of in a proper recycling system, this change is going to prove worthless. Sure, there are consumers who don’t care, but the vast majority want to do the right thing. They need to be nudged. 

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

It’s very tempting to make some pompous statements, but I hope that I’ve been able to convey to young people, starting in the packaging industry how wonderful it is to create packaging products, which help to sell products, protect them in the complex supply chain, deliver clear information for the consumer and designed to help with recycling or reuse. Whenever I coach young packaging students, I always warn them that packaging is addictive.

Source: Appetite Creative

  Agency, Appetite Creative, Jenny Stanley, Packaging, TK Packaging Consulting, Ton Knipscheer