Don’t Dew It

9 inch axiom – Sampling

‘FREE is a very good FOUR letter word.  Sampling engages the senses and creates a wonderful thing . . . obligation’ 

CASE STUDY – The Vault Taste Challenge

Coca Cola owns Vault soda.  Never heard of it?  Don’t worry you are not alone. Pepsi’s Mountain Dew owns the category with an 80% share of citrus soda.  Vault has a paltry 4% after 3 years of existence.

Here is the promotion in a nutshell:

Vault is sending out coupons.  The coupon entitles the bearer a free 16, 20 or 24 ounce Vault with the purchase of Mountain Dew. You can read further about the promotion in this Mediapost article.

The program is genius in its simplicity and in its design.  They are targeting the 80% of the market and throwing down a Pepsi-esque taste challenge.  They are confident in the taste of Vault and ideally want to position themselves as a better tasting alternative to Dew with an extra caffeine kick.  The promotion allows for the brand to start a dialogue with targeted prospective consumers by letting them compare Vault with Mountain Dew on their own terms. In terms of the RIGHT3 test I have to give the Vault brand team high marks.

Takeaway: SAMPLING WORKS.  There may not be a more cost effective way for brands to drive purchase intent and conversion than sampling.  The proof is in the numbers as highlighted in this article in BRANDWEEK.  Here are the top two takeaways from the Arbitron survey they feature:

• 24% of consumers bought the product they sampled instead of the item they initially set out to purchase
• 35% of customers who tried a sample bought the product during the same shopping trip

Today’s Lagniappe  – A funny travel story and a piece of trivia.  

Story: I was once vacationing in the Caribbean.  I happened to overhear three local women having a conversation about their boyfriends.  Specifically they were comparing them to beverages.  The first woman started and said, “If my Michael was a drink, he’d be a 7-up . . . cause he’s 7 inches and he’s always up”.  The second one spoke up and said, “If my Christoph was a drink, he’d be a Mountain Dew . . . cause first he mounts me, the he dews me”.  The last woman spoke up, clearly not wanted to be outdone and said, “Dat ain’t nothing.  If my Simon was a drink . . . he’d be a Jack Daniels”.  There was a long pause and then one of the other girls spoke up, “Girl . . Jack Daniels, dat’s a hard liquor”.  She then quickly replied, “Dat’s my Simon!”.

Trivia: I had the opportunity to listen to presentation from Google at the PMA Integrated Marketing Conference last week.  An interesting stat came up about coupons.  It turns out the number of searches for the term ‘coupon’ outperformed the number of searches for ‘Britney Spears’.  The times . . . they are a changin’.

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