Whilst PR and advertising help get people to your door, once there, they are still faced with your competitor’s products. This is where product demonstrating and experiential sampling come into their own.
Having previously owned one of New Zealand’s largest promotional sampling companies for 12 years, director Rebecca Purdy knows what it takes to turn consumer curiosity into actual sales. Linda Lilley and Jo Woodbury have worked alongside Rebecca for the better part of 8 years running the promotional side of the business. Between them they have conducted over 1,800 sampling campaigns nationwide.
Operating in 6 key markets throughout New Zealand our team of both in store and experiential promotional staff act as an extension of your business to help with sales in key stores or out and about in the public arena.
Clients use our team to assist with nationwide product training for key retail staff on the specifics of their product features in leading appliance stores. Some of our clients have used our team to help with training all in-store staff nationwide. Other clients have used our team to help key customers with buying decisions at a purchasing level. We call them our Aisle Angles and they have proven to be very effective when it comes to purchasing their product over a competitor’s product.
Whatever your needs, we can guarantee you professional, effective and site-safe trained staff working on your product, brand or service. A dedicated team of promotional staff will be fully trained on your product prior to going into the field.
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Product sampling with demonstration staff allows you to communicate the features and benefits of your brand direct to potential customers. A product sampler could talk up to 200 people in a 3 hour session, delivering key information that encourages shoppers to choose your brand.
One of the indirect benefits of in-store sampling is increasing product awareness. Not all product samples will convert into a sale there and then, but increased brand visibility makes your product more likely to be front of mind when customers are making buying decisions then and in future.
Here’s how it works:
You provide us with a brief on your objectives, timing and number of stores.
We will come back with a detailed proposal on roll out and campaign objectives.
This is what we will do for your campaign:
• Store lists created
• Store list signed off by you and booked by us
• Sales reps contacted
• Training our staff – video if required, otherwise notes
• Data, photos and general feedback collected on a nationwide level
• Weekly feedback to client
• Provide photos of the campaign
• Key learnings and feedback in a full report provided at the end of the campaign
Other aspects of the campaign we can take care of:
• Signage for stands
• Uniforms
• Disposables – cups/gloves/etc
Pointers for you to know:
• We have staff in 6 regions but we can send to other regions, mileage is costed up on this basis
• All sessions are a minimum of 3 hours but most clients prefer to do 4 hours in store to maximise staff time
• If you require appliances/microwaves or other tools to do the job, please advise us at the time of briefing
What stores have we worked in?
Appliance stores – nationwide Supermarkets – nationwide
Liquor stores – nationwide Clothing stores – nationwide
Overview
There are a number of different activities you can conduct outside of the store to build profile and awareness. Experiential campaigns bring a product to life. They need to be creative, they need to be eye-catching and they should be innovative. It’s about creating a connection between your brand and your customer.
Often part of a broader PR mix, experiential campaigns are rolled out at ‘street level’.
Sampling at key traffic areas is a great way to get people’s attention and can be undertaken at traffic lights, bus stops, train stations and other high traffic areas.
Here’s how it works:
- You provide us with a brief
- We come back with a creative campaign
- We book the staff (nationwide if need be)
This is what we will do for your campaign
- Provide a creative concept or tie in with an existing concept
- Provide additional merchandise for the campaign if required, which will be sourced and costed as part of our campaign brief
- Train staff on job requirements
- Gain council permission if necessary
- Work with designers if other material is required
- Provide uniforms if required
CASE STUDIES:
SCHWARZKOPF Ambulance
At The Generalist we aren’t fans of replicating the same old cookie cutter experiences, so this arena is for clients who really want to shake up their marketing and create wow factor for their consumers.
COLD POWER
In 2016, Cold Power took on the sponsorship of the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic Netball team. The Generalist PR joined the team in order to initiate an experiential activation for 8 games between Rotorua, Hamilton and Tauranga.
Extend the reach and impact of your experiential campaign with live, interactive experiences that generate lasting connections between your consumers and your brand.
We can help you turn consumers into brand advocates by producing authentic, entertaining and relevant content they’ll want to share on their social media platforms. With customised image frames tailored to your event, this simple way of creating branded content will increase your own social media following while enabling you to reach much larger audiences as consumers share posts with their social networks. We can provide the frames to be designed and worked to fit the brand image of your company or brand.
Hashtagging encourages Instagram and linked Twitter posts and helps extend the reach, engagement and measurability of your campaign.
And if social media reach isn’t a primary objective for your campaign, we can offer an on-the-spot printing option so you can give people a lasting reminder of the event to take home with them.
