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Every week there seems to be another brand at the station handing out samples of the latest drink, food, or beauty product. It begs the question, is thrusting product into the hands of busy commuters an effective way of building brand awareness and, ultimately, driving sales? Handing out free products to passing consumers is the easy part, but to achieve long-term commercial return  it’s crucial to turn the encounter into a genuine, positive and memorable brand interaction with your target consumer.

In 2011, on behalf of our drinks clients alone, Focus PR has already poured over 100,000 samples and interacted one-on-one with thousands of target consumers. Rather than employing third parties to run sampling activity for our clients, we personally act as brand custodians, with bucket-loads of passion and product knowledge to convey the right messages. As with so much in PR, it’s all about targeting, tone and delivery. Here are our three top tips to elevate your sampling campaign beyond the norm:

Right place, right time: it may seem obvious, but strategic targeting is often overlooked. A  sampling campaign needs to be relevant, taking place in the right environment; not just where target consumers will be but where they will be in the right frame of mind and therefore more receptive to spending time engaging with the brand and the sampling team. It’s also essential to make the activity relevant to consumers’ current buying tastes and prevailing trends.

Taking their 'Harveys half hour' at the Ideal Home Show

We were challenged to recruit a new, younger consumer (ABC1 women aged 30 – 50) for the nation’s favourite Sherry brand – Harveys® – while re-engaging with their existing target audience (ABC1 woman aged 50+). To choose the ideal locations to sample from we identified common pastimes between the age groups. Firstly, a little time to themselves was seen as a luxury and, secondly, there was a strong interest in the home and family, in particular gardening and/or spending days out at heritage properties and gardens. We developed the creative proposition of Harveys Half Hour, essentially encouraging women in both age groups to take half an hour out of their busy day to do something just for them. We identified the Ideal Home Show and the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show as two locations where both age groups of women would be. The campaigns were a tremendous success: our account handling team gave out 90,000+ samples of Harveys Bristol Cream over ice with a slice of orange over 23 days to target consumers. We also delivered a minimum of three brand messages per consumer (and 100% delivery of the new serve ‘Harveys over ice with a slice of orange’ message) and over half of the 270,000 visitors to the Ideal Home Show were able to recall the brand as a result of the campaign. Most importantly, Harveys sales are considerably ahead of target for the year.

Bring your brand message to life: for consumer sampling to really work, your brand experience needs to be innovative and memorable to stand out from the crowd. Simply having a pod from which to hand out samples will not remain in the minds of consumers for long.

Challenged to come up with an engaging way to educate consumers about Maker’s Mark’s core brand message – the uniquely handmade bourbon – we conceived, developed and implemented a visually-stunning, bespoke pop-up vending machine installation which brought the handmade communications platform to life, literally. Throughout the UK, Maker’s + the Machine has been ‘popping up’ in high footfall areas where target profile adults are invited by the Focus PR team to sample a cocktail from the machine. Unbeknownst to them, a bartender is set-up inside the Machine, making the cocktails to order, with his or her hand appearing from the dispenser to hand out the drink, resulting in a delightful reaction of surprise. This activity delivers the ‘handmade’ message visually and verbally and provides us with around four minutes’ engagement time per consumer. With sales of Maker’s Mark doubling in just one year, it’s delivering commercially too.

Build word-of-mouth: creating an authentic dialogue with consumers will build hugely valuable brand advocates who’ll spread the word far and wide. Recently Red Stag by Jim Beam saw first-hand how effective this can be, even on a small scale.

The Red Stag by Jim Beam tuk-tuks draw the crowds

The new product from Jim Beam was the official whisky of the Relentless Boardmasters music festival in Newquay, and it was up to the Focus PR team to compete with the other drinks brands on offer to drive sales and awareness. Our team ran promotions on the festival site and in the town, giving out branded plectrums for every shot of Red Stag bought and rewarding consumers with a prize giveaway after two purchases. A simple scheme, it was designed to drive awareness of the brand – new to the UK market and hitherto unknown – and give our team a chance to talk directly to consumers and create a buzz around the brand. Branded trilbies and red ‘wayfarer’ sunglasses were spot on for the target audience (18-24 year olds) who loved standing out among the cool festival crowd. The POS was supported by branded tuk tuks in which consumers posed for photos, discovered Red Stag and claimed their prizes. Word of our activity spread like wildfire and consumers were soon seeking us out to claim their rewards and talk to us about Red Stag before taking their branded POS away with them to generate added interest in the brand.

Compared to the relatively small sponsorship fee invested in this event, the return from a brand awareness point of view was phenomenal. Supported by Twitter and Facebook, hundreds of young adults took on board key brand messages and information and passed them on to their friends. What’s more, 40 cases of Red Stag were sold in Newquay during the festival, as a direct result of the sampling activity.