City centre sampling opportunities are far and wide. Most city centre authorities (councils) provide dedicated sampling spaces in high footfall pedestrianised areas of the city. But how, when and where are the best places to sample? Read on and we’ll tell you.
There are a number of ways to deliver a successful city centre sampling activity: we’ve pretty much done them all. It depends on a number of factors but most importantly what you want to achieve from the sampling – is it trial, general brand awareness or drive to purchase? It could be a combination of all three but whatever you want to do, high street sampling provides a great place for brand and product exposure. Here’s why…
We’re all consumers. We go to town, we browse, we shop, we purchase. Just take a look at the number of people walking up and down your local high street on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Anyone of those shoppers is a potential customer and a great way to introduce then to your product is a free sample. There are a couple of ways to do this:
Fixed or static sampling means that we use a dedicated event space. These are most often provided (at a cost) by local authorities or sometimes third party managing agents. Either way we offer a full end-to-end service where we sort all of this out pre-activation. You can pretty much put whatever you want in this space. It could be some kind of pop-up brand experience or shipping container, a promotional sampling vehicle or a bespoke built ski lodge giving out free ice creams. The advantage of a fixed event space is that it creates a greater visual impact, generates more shopper interest, allows more consumer dwell time and longer customer conversations. The main disadvantage is the cost not only to hire the space, but to create the sampling experience as well. Overall it’s a larger brand proposition that requires a bigger budget but is much more engaging.
Roaming sampling in city centres will usually require the use of branded sampling bins (also known as dump bins). When used in conjunction with the correct permits (again, something which we arrange and manage) this means our sampling staff can load up samples from a base nearby and literally wheel the sampling bins up and down high streets, distributing the free samples to shoppers and consumers as we go. It’s low cost, high volume and allows a greater range of flexibility and geographical movement than a fixed event space but the conversations with consumers are shorter and quality engagements are much lower. But if cost-effectiveness is what you’re after then you can’t go wrong.
At some point in the last decade or so we’ll have visited a city centre near you with a branded pop-up, experiential campaign or sampling activation. So we know most city centres very well – we know which ones have high footfall, which days of the week are best and which are the best value for money. Some of our favourites include:
We create unique, engaging and memorable brand experiences for all kinds of sampling activations. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a food or drink product (although we do work with a lot of FMCG brands and well known products) – we also work with tech, finance, retail, automotive and other sectors which require the distribution of free product samples from time to time. Her’s some great examples of city centre based sampling campaigns we’ve created:
There’s a lot involved in designing and implementing a city centre sampling campaign. But we do it week in, week out so we’re used to the micro-detail that can be required. We’ve quickly become experts at delivering these types of campaigns so we’re happy to help sort out and manage the following:
Need help with city centre sampling or a pop-up sampling experience? We know what we’re doing. Contact us using the form, email or call 0113 243 8194.
