Case Study - French's Mustard Smooth & Spicy

Supermarket Product Sampling

Client: Bespoke Foods

Brand: French's Mustard - Smooth & Spicy

Campaign: Smooth and Spicy Supermarket Sampling

Locations: 63 Sainsbury's & 27 Tesco's Across the Northwest, Yorkshire, Midlands and London

Brief:

• To promote brand awareness, prompt trial and drive sales of the Smooth & Spicy range of French's Mustard, through the execution of a high impact product sampling campaign at selected Tesco and Sainsbury's stores across the UK.

Campaign Description:

• To introduce thousands of new customers to the unique taste of French's Smooth & Spicy Mustard and drive both immediate and sustained, long term produce sales, a hot food sampling program was implemented across the largest, most demographically relevant Tesco and Sainsbury's stores across the UK.

BRANDED EVENT AREA AND SAMPLING UNIT

• A team of properly briefed brand ambassadors enthusiastically communicated the unique product proposition to all customers who came into store, and offered out freshly cooked, hot samples of either steak strips or new potatoes, drizzled with the Smooth and Spicy Mustard.


• While the customers enjoyed their sample, the team communicated the versatile product usages, recipe ideas, the current discount offer on in store, and the normal stock position. Each sample was also offered with a polite encouragement to customers, to make a purchase today.


• To create a base for the campaign, an event area was created to fit within the sampling area in front of stores. This was done with a mixture of branded gazebos, graphic stands, hobs and griddles, which allowed staff to create cooked samples of potatoes and beef strips to demonstrate the taste of Smooth & Spicy.


• The campaign focused on sampling the Smooth & Spicy range of French's Mustard, though the team promoted the entire range of mustards. This ensured the campaign raised awareness and sales for the entire range of the French's Mustard brand.


• The event area displayed a mix of bottled products, attractively displayed samples, oversized branded cut out product images, surrounded with Smooth & Spicy branded display banners and a branded gazebo that covered the entire area from the elements. The branded elements were brought together with catering equipment such as hobs to create a fully functional branded event area.


• Samples were displayed on silver catering platters and served in small transparent bowls with sporks, which allowed the mustard and food accompaniment to be clearly seen by customers.

Branding:

• The ambassadors wore smart, branded catering uniforms, increasing the credibility, the branding and the overall impact of the campaign.


• The event area displayed the range of products, attractively presenting samples, oversized branded cut out product images, surrounded with Smooth & Spicy branded display banners and a branded gazebo that covered the event area. The branded elements were brought together with catering equipment such as hobs to create a fully functional branded event area.

Results:

• The enthusiastic brand ambassadors and attractively presented event area enabled customer acceptance rates for a product as divisive as a spicy mustard to be extremely high. Out of an average of 1,250 shoppers approached with a sample each day, approx 700 were immediately keen to try one and engage with the brand ambassadors.


• Out of the shoppers who tried the sample, approx one in every ten shoppers were then persuaded to make an immediate purchase. This huge increase in demand rocketed sales uplifts by over 5,500% on average across the Tesco stores. (Percentage uplift figures are accurate according to Tesco's own sales data, provided by DunnHumby).


• During the course of the activity, over 90,000 shoppers were introduced to the French's Smooth and Spicy product and tasted a sample from the branded event unit. All of these shoppers walked away with the print collateral encouraging them to incorporate it into their meals, and thousands were also impressed enough to make their product purchase immediately.


• In addition to the sales uplifts generated during the sampling days, the sales uplift data showed a long term sustained uplift in sales of 28% in the 10 week period after activity, in the stores which the sampling was conducted at. This ongoing benefit is generated from the repeat loyal purchase of those new customers who bought on the day of activity and also from the delayed purchases from customers who tried a sample and who have then gone on to purchase the product in the weeks following their interaction with the sampling team.