CD Samplers Track Consumer Activity

Kraft Canada, Wells Fargo and Bath & Body Works are among the marketers using CD-sampler premiums to prompt and then track consumer activity online.

CDs distributed on-pack or at retail carry music aimed at consumers 30 and older; multimedia overlays that consumers can use when they put the CD in a computer; and two tracking programs.

The first tracks how many consumers actually put the CD in a computer (rather than just playing the music) and what links they use to access brand Web sites. Marketers use that aggregated data to track real-time consumer response to the premiums.

Business-to-business brands can track when customers access the CD to schedule a service call.

“It’s extremely valuable to know in real time who has seen the demonstrations to follow up in real time with a phone call,” said Sari McConnell, VP-marketing and product development for Sugo Music, which creates the CDs.

The second tracking program, dubbed Listen & Link, opens a launch page (whose design mimics a brand’s packaging) with targeted links to specific pages on the brand’s Web site. Marketers also can pose survey questions to consumers.

Last spring Wells Fargo created a CD targeting Hispanics, with direct links to its Spanish-language pages. A separate CD for small-business owners included links to specific services and local branches. Wells Fargo distributed those CDs via Chamber of Commerce events nationally during Small Business Week in May. The Hispanic CDs were distributed at community events during Hispanic Heritage Month, in September and October.

This fall, Kraft Canada puts CDs on packages of Post adult cereals. Three different CDs mix classical music with nature sounds, then adds video and flash animation touting the 12 participating brands. Links lead listeners to ongoing marketing efforts, including Kraft’s What’s Cooking magazine (listeners can get five free issues) and a chance to sign up for recipes via e-mail.

“It’s an innocuous music CD, but it pulls together lots of different marketing activities,” McConnell said. Packaging is in English and French; the CD asks users’ language preference, then gives links in that language.

This fall Bath & Body Works is giving a music CD as a gift with purchase to launch its Hydrotherapy line. The CD carries a direct link to the Hydrotherapy page on Bath and Bodyworks’ main Web site.

Del Monte supports its Nature’s Goodness baby food with a mail-in offer for a lullaby CD. Its launch page shows a sleeping baby “dreaming” of Nature’s Goodness products. The slide show of products is timed to the music on the CD. Links bring moms to a page on baby nutrition.

Last month Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants put CD samplers in hotel rooms for guests to use on the in-room CD player during their stay. Guests can buy the same CD from the minibar. Links to Kimpton’s site lets users make reservations and set a profile of personal preferences.

“The multimedia aspects are sometimes seen as gravy to the core premium. But they help get consumers more involved in the brand,” McConnell said. “If you really want consumers to put a CD into their computer, you have to shout that at them.”

Older consumers prefer CD premiums to music downloads—and the brand connection lasts longer, McConnell said.

“Once the music is downloaded, the association with the brand goes away. [Plus] CDs’ multimedia benefits would get lost via download process,” she said.

Foster City, CA-based Sugo is a full music-production company with 6,000 songs in its archives and relationships with major and independent record labels. The company also creates compilation CDs that sell at The Sharper Image, National Geographic and other specialty retailers.