Points of Switch
Warner-Lambert faced a challenge two years ago when it wanted to extend sampling of its anti-itch cream Benadryl to reach heavy users. The drugmaker could hardly rely on doctors handing patients trial packets to send a marketing message to the band of self-treaters who scratch their own itches. It needed to find the people most likely to become victims of poison ivy, mosquito bites, and heat rash. Broad sampling of the over-the-counter drug would be useless. So Warner-Lambert worked out a program with KOA Kampsites, tickling active families with samples at what it calls the “point of itch.”
Brands from salsa to sedans have turned to sampling to ignite consumer trial and conversion. Yet event sampling has taken a strategic turn. Brands are going after their potential hardcore users in locations where they are most receptive to offers. Hitting a hot spot with a limited flight of samples is more cost-effective than a rifle-shot mass giveaway.
Brands from salsa to sedans have turned to sampling to ignite consumer trial and conversion. Yet event sampling has taken a strategic turn. Brands are going after their potential hardcore users in locations where they are most receptive to offers. Hitting a hotspot with a limited flight of samples is more cost-effective than a rifle-shot mass giveaway.
Brands are discovering consumers in the places where they conduct everyday life, from soccer meetings to museums to army bases. They’re seeking uncluttered territory, where consumers’ needs for their products are most apparent or where they are most likely to try something new.
“Sampling in nontraditional venues is growing by leaps and bounds. The target is mobile and not responding to media. You need to break through the clutter,” says Christopher Donnelley, president and principal at Mill House McCabe, the Salem, MA marketing agency.
Adds Paula Balzer, senior vp and general manager at Totowa NJ-based Contemporary Marketing, Inc.: “You need to approach consumers at a lifestyle level that makes sense to them to get them to listen to your message. You become a citizen in their community so you are talking to them on their level, and the message becomes more compelling.”
Call of the wild Warner-Lambert 1/2rst sought outdoors types by sampling at 20 flower and garden shows, and 1,200 March for Parks events on Earth Day weekend. The programs worked, but these were people who knew how to keep their pants tucked in their socks. The company vetoed a suggestion to sample outside retailers’ lawn and garden departments, relates Peter Heymann, ceo of handling agency Sukon Marketing, New York.
The brand hit paydirt with KOA Kampgrounds, where 25 million people visit every year. Six million samples in co-op packs were distributed to 550 campsites during summer 1996 and 1997.
The program was cost-efficient per sample besides being targeted directly at consumers in “potential point-of-itch sites,” says Warner-Lambert marketing manager Barbara Bodner.
Many other more mainstream brands have turned to campgrounds as a point of switch, if you will. Packaged goods marketers from Kellogg to Frito-Lay have accessed KOA to pass out trial sizes around the campfire when people are feeling good and making memories.
“Packaged goods vendors want to reach consumers where they are relaxed and having fun. Research shows this creates affection for the brand,” says Susan Langren, marketing director at Des Moines-based Meredith Custom Publishing, which manages the KOA program.
Hershey bars would seem to qualify as a brand that could sampled to anybody anywhere. Yet the chocolatier sought incremental sales by partnering with KOA in a sampling program based on S’mores-making events. KOA distributed recipe cards for the classic campfire sandwiches, but also worked them into a “walk and talk” activity with mom, dad, and the kids.
Healthy choices Sampling to target groups at special events and venues could soon lose the “nontraditional” label. Take Blockbuster’s sampling program, in which customers get samples if they rent multiple videos. It’s seven years old.
“The program has good reach and it’s a good way to hit snacking families” while watching videos, says Keebler director of market planning and promotions Mike Jurgensen.
The program helps vendors reach a pre-defined demographic group and samplers know the trial size is going right home with the video. “It’s great for products you would enjoy that night or the next morning,” says Rick Mangione of Market Source, the Cranbury, NJ, company that developed the program.
Since 80 percent of tapes are rented on Fridays, it pre-empts weekend shopping and FSI drops, notes Mangione. Samples are featured in P-O-P and on store TV monitors.
Health clubs are another venue where sampling has flexed its muscle. The 4,000-club International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, Northbrook, IL, kicked off sampling with a June 1994 program for Ralston’s Multi Chex cereal. Brands from Dunkin Donuts to Hormel Foods and Chupa Chups have since signed on to make an impression with the club’s upscale, health-oriented clientele.
Magazines including Playboy and Cosmopolitan provide club sampling as a value-added to their advertisers, says IHRSA director of sales and promotions Chuck Leve.
IHRSA first tried to make its clubs a marketing medium by inducing brands to use trial memberships as premium offers. That wasn’t seen as valuable to the consumer. “Both the clubs and the brands want sampling,” says Leve.
Staying one step ahead of the clutter, brands are tagging along with consumers as they pursue their daily routines.
Sampling Corp of America, Glenview, IL, has helped Lever Brothers sample All detergent at parents’ soccer meetings, and brands such as Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Clorox at kindergarten graduations. They are unique venues that draw the brand’s highest-value consumers, says Sampling Corp. vp sales Jesse Reif.
Local heroes “Our clients want to hit people at point of entry or at lifestyle change points” where they are often forced to make category decisions, says Reif. “I want to get as high a percentage as I can of a very specific target.”
Targets for big programs, then, number two million to three million people instead of 10 million to 15 million, and everything is designed to look like the sample comes from the sponsoring organization. “We make the school principal or soccer coach the hero,” says Reif.
When Procter & Gamble owned Fisher Nuts five years ago, it wanted to sample a new barbecue flavor only to folks who liked barbecue. The company gave the nuts free to Arby’s stores in New England and counter workers passed them out to customers buying the Arby-Q sandwich.
“P&G loved it because they felt it was going to the right place,” says Art Averbook at Co-Op Promotions, the Miami-based company that handled the program.
But the Fisher campaign was a rare chestnut. QSRs are a difficult sampling venue to crack because there’s scant room behind their counters to stock product. And when food items are sampled, operators are concerned about cannibalization. Chains are busy with premium and entertainment-based promotions aimed at kids. If they sample it’s usually their own products. Burger King’s Free Fry Day blitz on Jan. 2 is a good example.
McSampling That situation may change, however, as the king of all QSRs opens its doors to samplers. McDonald’s is breaking tradition with its Gift Pack program for packaged goods partners who want to reach the chain’s family customers and share in the credibility of the McDonald’s brand name.
“We are always looking for a way to thank mothers. This grew out of our McMoms program,” the direct mail effort aimed at frequent visitors, says McDonald’s spokeswoman Amy Murray.
Customers who buy one Happy Meal or more get one free co-op gift pack with eight to 10 product samples in a program handled by marketing firm TMSI Corp. of Newton, MA. McDonald’s ran its first co-op sampler in September 1997. In February it ran a sampler in its 750 outlets in Wal-Mart stores. Four million customers in a May Mother’s Day event were handed packs including samples of Nabisco’s Lifesavers, General Mill’s French Toast Crunch cereals, 3M’s Comfort Strip bandages, and Procter & Gamble’s Oil of Olay.
The pack included a card for calling to change to Sprint Long Distance in return for 12 broad-use certificates with a value of 12 Happy Meals.
A fourth sampling event with eight to 10 participants kicks off on Sept 8, says TMSI managing director Stuart Montaldo.
The program has been set up without advertising to be a “pleasant surprise” to consumers, and has been well-received based on post-event research, in which consumers are offered a $2 gift certificate at the chain for calling an 800 number, says Montaldo.
“When you do a sample, the success depends on the product,” he adds. “We want to feature a product that is truly different or superior so people say ‘wow’ when they try it.”
A foot in the office door Armies of marketers have tried to reach consumers at the office, where they spend most of their time. But how to circumvent Mr. Dithers? Samplers have to be creative and persistent if they are going to get through that reception area door.
“When our clients hear we do a lot of workplace sampling, they are all over it,” says David Kennealey, director of sales and marketing at Silverback Creative Corp., Wellesley, MA.
Kennealey invented Corporate Sampling Day in 1990 when he was marketing manager at Smartfoods, now owned by Frito-Lay. He went knocking on commercial doors offering free bags of the company’s white cheddar popcorn, as well as branded shirts and boxer shorts.
“We were turned down half the time, but we got enough sample product out to help make the launch successful,” says Kennealey. “I learned that sampling in the workplace works. It was hard. Employers don’t want the work day broken up. You have to be a good salesperson to get in the door And I learned there has to be a better way to do it.”
One alternative Silverback tried was a radio contest for Quaker Oat’s Near East dry soup line last spring in eight Northeast markets. Winning callers got free lunch for their departments at the office. This was augmented with street sampling to drive the cost per sample down.
Marketers should expect to pay more per sample and plan more to reach targets at work. When Dunkin Donuts launched its bagel line, pro-active selling in store and street intercept programs wasn’t the only venue of vigorous marketing. A huge direct-to-business campaign brought bagel breaks into offices. For each of the 3,800 outlets, hundreds of business of all sizes hosted the events, says Mill House McCabe’s Donnelley, who was Duncan Donuts’ sales promotion manager at the time.
But the samples were turned down by 30 percent to 35 percent of the businesses approached. “We tried to do municipalities and got stonewalled,” he says. “These are not inexpensive programs. You need a lot of approvals. That requires persistence and long lead times.”
Sneak peeks Like their QSR counterparts, movie theater chain execs fear sampling as a competitor to concession sales. Marketers fear theater sampling because of the difficulty of targeting when sampling at the entrance of a multi-plex showing movies for five different age groups.
But marketers, bless their souls, are finding ways around these problems. Reebok is helping theater-goers find proper running shoes while promoting its DMX brand, which is featured in three-and-a-half minute pre-movie ads. After the film, consumers can visit trailers in theater parking lots to get “personalized prescriptions” for shoes, says Contemporary Marketing’s Balzer.
On-board employees trained at Reebok use hand-held computers that take consumers through a series of questions that help determine the right shoe.
Entertainment Arts, San Mateo, CA, wanted to reach men ages 18 to 34, the target for a realistic flight simulation game. Enter the Jane’s Combat Simulations Air Combat Tour, which strafes consumer pockets to build awareness for the game and drive sales at local retailers. In its second year, the tour has visited 24 military bases, 15 national air shows, and 20 Computer City Comp USA retail stores, says Charles Horsey, director of strategic development at Contemporary Marketing, the Totowa, NJ event marketer which put the event together.
For a series of military combat games, Entertainment Arts licenses the Jane’s name from the Jane’s Information Group, the British publisher of war materiel guides. Jane’s acts as a consultant for the games to provide an accurate experience of flying. The F-16 fighter game being featured in the tour is so complex it comes with an instruction book as opposed to a mere pamphlet, says Horsey.
A Chevy suburban totes a 20-foot trailer equipped with four cockpits and one stand-up unit where gamers and non-gamers alike are encouraged to duke it out. “We create an entertainment property with value-added elements,” says Horsey.
Museum pieces Despite all these samplers’ venue-hopping, be assured that the good old in-store variety remains the most used form of sampling. Ithas the undeniable advantage of being close to the point of purchase, and it makes product preparation easier. But in-store sampling has shown some declines recently, due to retailers’ sampling fees, the expense of multiple locations, and loss of control when retailers insist on their own companies, say samplers.
Jewel-Osco, Chicago, is a grocer that seems to be more in tune with brands’ latest thinking on how to sample. It’s announced a three-year sponsoring agreement with the city’s Museum of Science and Industry, giving it exclusive promotion rights in food and drug categories. It’s the museum’s first sponsorship effort. The grocer will likely be involved with four events a year during the next three years. Sampling will be one opportunity explored.
The chain will participate in the upcoming month-long BooFest Halloween event at the museum. Where would candy vendors like to be sampling their products in October? In aisle seven next to the baloney, or in the Hades Haunted House?
Sampling lifts off in cyberspace.
Imagine if retail stores set up endcaps filled with free samples where shoppers, say, waiting in line at the checkout might mosey over and try a new soap or cracker. It would have the advantages of being non-intrusive, shoppers would only take products of interest, and stores and vendors could offer a rich assortment of choices.
The obvious disadvantage is that there are no controls and no ways to track samplers and buyers.
Internet sampling companies such as the Sunflower Group’s The FreeSampleClub.com and SampleSample.com offer online browsers just such a smorgasbord of sample choices. But they include controls that pre-select who gets to pick a sample and limit the number of them per customer. The cyber-sample clearinghouses then find out how those sample-surfers acted and report back to vendors on their sampling and buying activity, with profiles of participants thrown in.
Fisher Nuts, a brand of J.B. San Filippo & Sons, Elk Grove Village, IL, tested FreeSampleClub.com for two months this spring, offering half-ounce samples of Roasted Salted Peanuts. “It gets the brand in front of the consumer in what is becoming a more accepted channel,” says marketing manager Eric Nally.
The service allows for direct mail follow-up. Members of the free online club fill out interactive profile questionnaires, inputting such information as age, family makeup, and pet ownership. The profile triggers a personal sample menu that offers samples from vendors looking to reach that profile. Members click on their choices, receiving them in a co-op mailer from the service’s fulfillment facility within a week.
“The data collection happens simultaneously, and I receive their demographic data immediately,” says Nally, who is still assessing the test and service. A vendor can compare the demographic data of those who qualified for the menu with the data on those who clicked for the sample.
“If we get a low click rate, maybe we aren’t targeting the right group, or there is an opportunity to make the brand more top of the mind,” he says.
Direct mail offers the same rifle shot marketing but with a great deal of waste. “Maybe one in 10 actually want the sample,” says Nally. FSC vendors pay only for samples requested and sent.
Members are never offered the same sample twice. They are questioned about their sampling and buying behavior when they return to site for more samples and must answer a minimum of questions to qualify for more samples.
Since its launch June 3, the service has logged 15,000 hits, and processed 10,000 orders, for samples from vendors including Revlon, Nestle, Jergens, and Kellogg.
Internet users skew heavily male, but FSC claims its traffic is 78 percent female, ages 18 to 35.
The best place to sample herbal tea drinkers is in a soothing setting, like their own living rooms. That was the thinking of Thomas J. Lipton Co.’s Canadian division when it looked for trial of its new Bedtime Blendflavor.
“Those who drink it tend to drink a lot of it. It’s very important to find those people,” says Kate Ellis, brand manager, Lipton herbal tea.
Lipton turned to direct mailer ICOM to locate the niche target and reach them with a test offer. ICOM surveys Canadians with detailed questionnaires deriving household-level information on buying behavior.
Surveys go to one out of every four households every six months, and the company receives a better than 20 percent response. “Their survey showed who the heavy users were,” says Ellis.
A Lipton sample was sent out to medium and heavy users and competitive users in a spring 1998 co-op mailing with 20 other offers. The tea sample, plus a 75-cent coupon, appeared in 255,000 of the 550,000 envelopes in the mailing. Initial response has been positive based on coupon redemptions and calls through a 800 number, says Ellis.
“When you do a mass sampling for niche categories there is a tremendous amount of waste, even if you consider demographics,” says Susan Lulka, account manager, ICOM. “Our mailing is based on purchase behavior.”
Lipton paid $150 per thousand to be in the co-op mailing, not including the cost of the samples. It would have cost 15 times that to reach 1,000 people in-store, Ellis estimates.
Back in the USA, Revlon spread its sampling wings, supplementing its cosmetic counter trial offers with some direct mail sampling with CoxDirect.
CoxDirect’s sampling business has grown as categories such as cosmetics and drugs opt for direct mail’s broad reach and targeting promise around major retailers’ trade areas. Revlon sent out one million samples of its Color Stay lipstick with a coupon in a CoxDirect solo mailing. CoxDirect sent 25 million Pepcid AC samples with coupon in a Carol Wright co-op mailing.
“Our sampling is up about 40 percent from last year. You can’t sample a tube of lipstick in a women’s magazine,” says CoxDirect president Peter Burgess.
Since buying Carol Wright from Donnelly Marketing in 1996, CoxDirect has revamped the mailing list to identify more promotionally responsive households. It created a 25-million-name, household mailing file from sources including retailers, manufacturers, personal computer sellers, and pet shop owner lists.
“We wanted this mailed to families with children who own a house with an average income of $52,000. They spend more money on everything,” says Burgess.
It then plotted neighborhoods around the top 50 food, drug, and mass merchant retailers in 160 markets. Will Carol Wright direct mail pieces, fatter with more samples, rise out of the mail clutter on the kitchen table? CoxDirect will help samplers find out drawing on AC Neilsen panel and telephone research.
Brands are ranging far and wide out-of-store to find the heaviest users in their categories. Yet checkout-driven sampling is restoring the retail venue as a sampling mecca.
In sampling based on “buyographics,” brands can target efficiently on the heaviest users, with the advantage of being at point-of-sale.
Keebler is checking out Catalina Marketing’s Checkout Sampling service, which issues sample certificates to shoppers based on purchase. “We were intrigued by their ability to target the heaviest using consumers and, in particular, competitive users,” says Mike Jurgensen, director of market planning and promotions for the Elmhurst, IL-based cookie and cracker marketer. Keebler is sampling an unnamed brand or brands in a test.
Jurgensen likes that he can award full-sized samples to the consumer being pre-qualified by the system. “If you get a full package into the house, multiple family members can sample it and conversion stands a much higher chance,” says Jurgensen. “We’ve got some robust expectations on trial and conversion.”
Checkout sampling shares some traits with Internet sampling. Both are non-intrusive and both pre-select, one by actual buys, the other by demographic profile.
Face it. A sample dangling from the Sunday newspaper can dominate the top-of-the-fold headlines. “The bag communication is more well read than the front page of the newspaper,” says Sunflower Group vp sales Tom Roberts, Overland Park, KS.
The sampling works because polybag billboard ads are hard to miss and the bag can present a larger sample than in direct mail. And the newspaper bypasses mail box clutter, reaching consumers when they are more receptive, including Saturday and Sunday mornings. Newspaper samples post recall of 80 to 90 percent and trial of 30 to 50 percent.
Samplers are able to offer costs about half that of in-store and direct mail, at $150 to $190 per thousand, since there is no mailing list or postage expense. Plus the packaging demands are less than with direct mail that must withstand the rigors of postal delivery, says Tim Quinn, senior vp at Alternative Marketing Network’s APD division, Norwalk, CT.
“Its highly visible, its inexpensive, and it’s targeted,” says Quinn.
Pepcid AC shipped out 38 million samples on Super Bowl Sunday via Valassis’s NewsPouch program, an inspired effort to match a need with a solution.
“We target to the lowest level the newspaper delivers,” and match routes with research panel data including from consumer questionnaires on products’ usages and frequency, says Valassis’ sampling brand manager Judy Rothwell.
It’s shotgun targeting, based on the homogeneity of neighborhoods. Marketers from Procter & Gamble to Nestle to AOL, and retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Vons are using the paperboy to get the sample into the right homes at java time.
