Sophisticated Sampling

The sampling event is an age-old marketing strategy. But more and more these days, the emphasis is on the event.

More than 84 percent of brands currently sample their wares in some form or another, according to Cox Direct. Spending on sampling promos jumped beyond $1 billion for the first time in 1998. And as rapidly advancing technology enables companies that could never have used the strategy before – some with seemingly nothing to sample – marketers are now looking for ways to avoid the dreaded “c” word: clutter.

Today sampling is increasingly wrapped up within integrated marketing programs that feature events, media tie-ins, sweepstakes – anything that will give consumers a total sense of the brand instead of just a few tastes of the product. Those requirements are called for just as much at in-store events (where 57% of all sampling still takes place, per Cox) as at an increasing variety of other venues.

Since fuller programs cost more, marketers want tightly targeted promotions that get their samples into the hands of people who might actually buy the product, That’s got event and direct sampling companies working overtime to identify consumers.

“The days of putting people on a street corner with a sack are over,” says Mike Napoliello, Jr., director of client services at U.S. Marketing & Promotions, Torrance, CA. “We are really pushed by our clients to develop brand equity. They want full integration because, more than ever, they have to make these programs pay.”

Road shows

Case in several points: USM&P helped Maplewood, NJ-based Alpine Lace Brands make its first venture into product sampling this spring with a road tour in a refrigerated truck. Rather than just driving willy-nilly around the nation, the deli meats and cheeses company leveraged its relationship with pro golfer Annika Sorenstam and shadowed her at Ladies Professional Golf Association tour events.

The truck would visit supermarkets on Thursdays and Fridays, then park as close to the golf tournament as the LPGA would allow on weekends. A putting game was used to attract attention. Visitors received tourney tickets, T-shirts, cookbooks, and coupons in addition to the product. And the tour was supported with FSIs and other local activities.

“It was a really good demographic fit for us,” because market research shows Alpine Lace customers are women over 35 who play golf 15 to 20 times per year, says Alpine Lace marketing assistant Eric Boonshaft. The tour was such a hit that Alpine Lace extended it beyond the planned July close into October.

White Plains-based RC Cola jumped back into sampling this spring to launch RC Edge Maximum Power, a teen-targeted spin-off product boasting Indian ginseng and taurine in addition to caffeine. “When you don’t have an enormous ad budget, it’s the best way to generate trial,” says RC vp-marketing Jeff Spencer.

But how to make a splash with teens with a brand that has always been overshadowed by Coke and Pepsi? By staging events that lived up to the new product’s name. RC enlisted White Plains agency TMPG, which specializes in promotions with radio tie-ins, to put together a 25-market tour with “Edgy” activities at which to pass out 20-oz bottles of the cola.

In Columbus, OH, the tour worked with radio station WZAZ to take listeners white-water rafting; in Akron, WMMS listeners competed for free skydiving jumps; in Dallas, the effort became literal when aptly initialed KDGE broadcast live from the roof of a music store. DJs were enlisted to try Edge on-air at all stops.

“You’re not going to be able to reach your target audience if you force-fit events,” says TMPG senior vp Janet Ginsberg. “You need to give the brand a specific ID.”

RC likes the response so far, and plans to “do a lot more” sampling in 2000, when it will take Diet Rite back on the road as well, says Spencer.

“Sampling is such a large part of our business strategy,” says Jonathan Cronin, vp-marketing for Vancouver, British Columbia-based Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp. “But just giving a person a bottle isn’t enough anymore. The challenge is to create opportunities that are more exciting.”

The company did just that this summer with two programs for its Clearly Canadian O+2 super-oxygenated beverage. Both promos have sampling at their core, but plenty of integration to give them brand-building substance.

In one, a sampling team drove cross-country in an authentic M.A.S.H. Jeep in a tie-in with the Prime TV network, which scheduled a M*A*S*H* marathon for Labor Day Weekend. The alliance gave Clearly Canadian “a media component that we normally would not have,” as Prime TV ran on-air spots covering the team’s itinerary, says Cronin.

In the other, the company joined with retailer Authentic Fitness Corp. to give away free bottles of O+2 with every purchase of Speedo products at 48 Authentic Fitness, The Running Room, and National Sports outlets nationally. “It’s a different execution of a similar strategy. We get good exposure and tie into an atmosphere and brand that are ideal for O+2,” says Cronin.

Personal mail

Direct sampling can’t really offer much entertainment value. But it can provide the targeted profiles that make trial and, hopefully, conversion more of a sure thing.

“It’s more of a psycho-graphic approach now. We’re getting a lot more requests to get into the mindset of the consumer,” says Jesse Reif, sales manager of Bounty SCA, the Glenview, IL-based Snyder Communications division that already targets its sampling programs down to such demographic niches as Hispanic households with kids six to 12. “People are taking our basic programs and asking us to break them down more precisely.”

Advances in database and distribution technology make that possible. Toronto-based ICOM Information and Communications Inc. has fine-tuned its TargetMail program so that every one of the nine million U.S. households that receive it each year can get a unique package of samples and coupons, says vp-client services Cathy Cronin. Consumers can be targeted based on brand and category usage, loyalty, and key habits in addition to demographics. For example, the database can tell you that consumer X suffers from arthritis, drinks coffee, and uses body wash, and regularly buys such brands as Advil, Yuban, and Oil of Olay. So consumer X’s portfolio gets stocked with samples of Tylenol, Folgers, and Dove.

“Brands don’t have to give up the precision of their own marketing strategies when they co-op,” says Cronin, whose company’s clients include Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, and Warner-Lambert.

Targeting is also about reaching the right consumers at the right time, says Mary Ann Rivers, vp-sampling at Livonia, MI-based ValassisCommunications. That’s why Pepcid AC sent samples via the Valassis newspaper-pou ch program on the last two Super Bowl Sundays. “You go after people who might have heartburn when they might have it,” she says.

Newspaper sampling is no longer the “mass distribution” system it was once considered, says Rivers. There are now more than a dozen newspapers nationally that can get a sample into a subscriber segment as small as 250 households, and with little increase in the costs passed on to marketers.

Valassis this fall launches a direct-mail sampling business alongside its newspaper operation. “There are some instances when spending the extra money on direct makes sense to reach a very fine target,” says Rivers.

Of course, the Internet has added another whole level of targeting to the mix by giving consumers the opportunity to choose the samples they want. That should lead to greater trial and conversion rates. St. Petersburg, FL-based Catalina Marketing’s ValuPage.com sampling and couponing service claims 1.3 million members; The Sunflower Group, Overland Park, KS, has amassed 55,000 members for its FreeSampleClub.com, but is aggressively shooting to have 500,000 by 2000, and is claiming to produce conversion rates as high as 39 percent.

Ringing up entertainment

With in-store and on-premise programs, marketers can get both event programming and niche targeting at the same time.

Creative Alliance Marketing & Communications, a Southport, CT-based promo shop, ran a 10-week tour for Pepsi One that hit 3,000 corporate cafeterias – and made a five-day visit to the usually impenetrable Pentagon. To snare the male 20-somethings who make up the bulk of cafeteria denizens, the agency hosted sports games and gave away prizes including tickets to the NCAA Final Four and the World Series. “It’s a great uncluttered place to hit consumers,” says Creative Alliance partner Nick Lemma. “And cafeteria managers love it because it helps them drive traffic.”

Most of the agency’s clients are looking for jazzier sampling events “because you need more of a hook to get consumers,” says Lemma. That’s why Fort Lee, NJ-based Carillon Importers added a Win A Ride in a MIG Jet sweeps to its standard on-premise activities for Stolichnaya.

When it comes to targeting, a brand can’t do much better than, say, the woman who bought its main rival the last four times she went shopping. That’s exactly who gets the sample through Catalina’s Buy-O-Graphics system, which drops a coupon for a free full-size product on consumers along with their receipts. About 25 brands have experimented with the program, which is generating conversion rates of better than 20 percent, says Catalina vp-marketing Cary Siegel.

It’s only a matter of time before various sampling channels begin to converge. EventNet USA Mall Sampling, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, the company that sent 11,000 cheerleaders into malls this spring to pass out Coke Cards, will launch Samplink.com next March. The plan is to hand out scratch-off gamecards with every sample, driving consumers to the Samplink site to see if they’ve won, explains EventNet’s Joel Benson. Once there, they answer questions about the samples, then get offered coupons for the product and a link to visit the brand’s site.

Sophisticated, no?

Fragrance companies have been annoying department store shoppers for years with those pesky samplers lurking at entrances and escalators, waiting to spray consumers with the latest scent before they even know what hits them. But new technology from Germany offers perfume and cologne makers more subtle disbursement methods: Calvin Klein and L’Oreal late last year both began testing scent-spraying kiosks through such retailers as Macy’s and Bloomingdales. Consumers press an on-screen icon for a shot of their fragrance of choice.

But scent technology isn’t just for the obvious brands. Makers of such products as cars, beer, candy, and soda are experimenting with developing a “scent-branding experience,” says Andrew Hetzel, spokesperson for Videotronic North America, a German company with a West Bloomfield, MI, office that offers the scenting kiosks through a partnership with Germany-based inventor aerome. (NCR Corp. of Dayton, OH, also offers kiosks with the aerome system.)

Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Carlsberg all are working on systems (mostly overseas) that dispense their products’ aromas. Several car companies are toying with the idea of creating a distinct smell for their autos that would then be dispensed via advertising and other means. “It’s kind of like what Intel did with sound,” explains Hetzel.

New York City-based Arcade Marketing Inc. knows the trend. Arcade makes scent and sample strips for fragrance and cosmetics companies to use in magazine ads. But overseas the company has started working with odor-free brands, too: Visa runs ads scented with grass (think country club) and upholstered leather (think Porsche) to offer a whiff of the good life its credit card can provide.

Sampling, it seems, nose no bounds.

Miami-based Look Worldwide president William Sancho remembers “watching the Mercedeses pull up out front” when he was a 16-year-old working at a dry-cleaning store. All grown up two-and-a-half years ago, Sancho began putting together a distribution network of 10,000 stores to target affluent white-collar consumers with what he likes to call an “unavoidable” advertising medium: the bags, dust covers, and hangers used to return dry cleaning.

Sancho hooked dry cleaner operators by offering bags and hangers at 50% less than standard prices. Consumers are hooked whether they like it or not. Look Worldwide’s system offers a national run, but can also burrow down to give marketers the dry cleaner around the corner.

Launched last year, the program quickly expanded to include coupons and samples that dangle off the hanger. America Online hung a software disk in California; NestlA is looking to string Carnation Instant Breakfast packets this fall. Culligan International couldn’t very well hang its water bottles, but it did attach a coupon good for 10 free gallons of water at nearby Culligan stores. PCS-service provider Aerial Communications did the same thing with a free-phone offer.

Sancho is working on deals to take the program to South America in October and Europe in November, and is also hoping to open more offices here in the U.S. He’s still running things with only six employees.

Which leaves little time just to hang around.