Welcome to another episode of the People of Packaging Podcast, recorded live right here at the Label King Studios in Salt Lake City. I am your host, Adam Peek, and today we are diving deep into the future of packaging design, consumer psychology, and artificial intelligence.
Our guest today is Ankit Dhawan, the founder of Bluepill.ai. Ankit has an incredible background, moving from India to the United States to complete his masters at Cornell before leading product for the global marketing team at Amazon. With over seven years of deep experience in AI, Ankit is solving one of the most frustrating, expensive, and analog processes in our industry: consumer insights and package testing.
In this episode, we run a live demo of the Bluepill.ai software using a real-world test case: Miss Essie’s BBQ Sauce, a fantastic local brand here in Utah.
Here is what we cover:
The Matrix Motivation: The story behind the name Blue-pill.ai and why taking the blue pill means choosing to stay in a perfectly simulated consumer environment.
The $140 Billion Problem: Package testing and market research traditionally cost fifteen thousand to twenty-five thousand dollars per study, taking anywhere from four to eight weeks. Bluepill.ai drops that down to under ten minutes.
Digital Twins and Micro-Personas: How the software uses real human behavioral data, qualitative interviews, and purchase signals to predict exactly how specific demographics will react to your package on the shelf.
The Miss Essie’s Shelf Test: We look at the actual heatmap data comparing Miss Essie’s to heavy hitters like Sweet Baby Ray’s and Stubbs, highlighting packaging strengths like practical dispensers and areas to improve like pale illustrations.
Ironclad Data Security: Why testing your proprietary designs with AI is actually much safer than human panels, ensuring your upcoming product launches never leak to your competitors.
We also have some fun debating geography, including my infamous shouting match at the Delhi airport over whether a city of five hundred thousand people actually exists.
Ankit’s tool changes the game from subjective guessing to objective, data-driven decision-making, allowing brands to iteratively test text orientation, visual clutter, and ingredient transparency for a fraction of traditional costs.
Check out the full episode to see the future of package testing in action.
Connect with Adam:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/adampeek
TikTok: @thelabelking
Connect with Ankit Dhawan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhawanankit/
Website: https://blue-pill.ai/
