How Data-Driven Decisions Maximise Experiential Impact
February 2025
Product sampling campaigns can come up against a whole host of challenges, particularly when the product isn’t exactly a ‘try-me-right-now’ kind of thing, like our experiential activation with premium condom brand, SKYN.
At Purity, we love a challenge and with every marketing hurdle, we believe there is an exciting opportunity to spring over it! With a clearly defined audience and measurable objectives, unforgettable activations, that build brand awareness and create connections with your audience, can result in memorable impact.
Leveraging Opportunities
Location, Location, Location: We can’t emphasise this enough, but choosing the right location, based on demographic data and footfall is essential when establishing the mechanics and perimeters of your campaign.
For our SKYN’s campaign, this took us to Miami in mid-October, and saw us immerse ourselves in the buzzing crowds attending III Points Festival, Kevin Hart Live and the Taylor Swift Eras Tour.
Squad Goals: Using audience insights to create an experience that makes people “Feel Good” will help to maximise the engagement and impact of your campaign.
We assembled a “Supreme Feel Hit Squad” for our activation – a team of bold, confident brand ambassadors who made party-goers feel like they’d found their people!
The Party Line: Understanding your audience’s pain points and crafting messaging that resonates with their wants and needs, allows you to deliver a focused campaign that says all the right things.
Our high-energy, guerrilla-style street activation helped us to cut through the noise of Miami’s vibrant nightlife and shout about SKYN with tactical precision.
Crush it!: Measure your success against the objectives set out in your strategy. Key metrics could include consumer feedback, lead generation or sales conversions.
Try not to get overwhelmed by too much data though, focussing on the metrics that align closely to your campaign targets will enable you to demonstrate your impact.
Over the course of three event-packed nights in Miami, we sampled 11,500 consumers, with an overwhelmingly positive response. As well as loving the product, consumers enjoyed the energy and interaction from our Hit Squad.
Following our Miami experience, SKYN asked Purity to run a similar activation in Austin, Texas in February 2025, which proved to be equally successful.
Our SKYN Sampling Campaign really hit the spot!
Get your Brand into More Hands
Boost Sales
Did you know that conversion rates soar as high as 70% as a result of product sampling campaigns? Making it a persuasive force to motivate your consumers to take action and make a purchase.
Create Advocates
People buy what they’ve tried and love, and happy customers can quickly become brand champions, helping to amplify your brand and increase its awareness among consumers.
According to global leader in audience insights, data and analytics, Nielsen, 88% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, and 77% are more likely to make a purchase after hearing about it from a trusted source, making brand ambassadors a powerful tool for building credibility.
Build Loyalty
By offering free product samples, brands create an opportunity for potential customers to experience their products without any initial investment. Positive sampling experiences often lead to long-term customer loyalty and advocacy.
Deloitte recently reported that customers who are acquired through product sampling have a 37% higher repeat purchase rate, compared to those acquired through other means.
Track and Analyse Metrics
Measuring the success of your experiential marketing, product sampling and brand experience campaigns gives you valuable insight into the effectiveness of your activities and enables you to optimise future marketing to maximise the impact of your brand.
Key metrics to consider include:
- Reach and engagement – footfall, interactions, samples distributed and the amount of time consumers spent engaging with your brand and / or experience.
- Digital traffic and traction – reach, impressions, engagement and user-generated content on your social media, and growth in followers during that period. Website visits, page views, time spent on the website and conversions made (lead generation or sales via the website) during the campaign period.
- Brand awareness and perception – measure changes in brand awareness before and after the campaign, gauge how consumers view your brand before and after and analyse feedback from consumers to understand the overall sentiment towards your brand.
- Sales – measure the number of sales before, during and after the campaign period, and calculate the return on your investment by comparing the costs against the revenue generated. Track the cost of new leads through your campaign.
- Data capture – Collect customer information (email addresses, demographic, etc) for future marketing campaigns.
Purity worked with MadeGood in San Diego to create a campaign that increased brand awareness and drove the trial of their high-quality, healthy snack bars.
The two-phase approach, combined public and retailer sampling, resulting in 161,000 samples being distributed.
Memorable Impact
Core to leveraging opportunities, getting your brand into people’s hands, and measuring the results of your campaign, is giving your audience an experience they’ll never forget.
Creating unique and engaging experiences that resonate with your audience on an emotional level, helps forge lasting connections with consumers, who become loyal brand ambassadors, help to drive increased sales and enhance your brand perception.
Pernod Ricard briefed our team to design an interactive booth that embraced the matra of “Do Whatever Tastes Good” for its Malibu marketing campaign. The experience saw Malibu Confession Booths pop up at festivals, events and bars across the UK, spreading the Malibu love and leaving party-goers with lasting memories.
In the Malibu Confession Booth, up to four friends could answer confessional questions, strike a pose for an epic photo, have a mini-disco, receive a printed keepsake, and a personalised GIF of their unforgettable experience.
Ready to Unleash the Power of Data?
Numbers are our thing, we track everything – consumer feedback, leads, sales, social buzz – you name it, we measure it!
Want people to know your name? Want to boost sales? Want to create brand BFFs?
Purity unleashes the power of data to transform your experiential marketing campaigns into legendary, talk-about-it-for-years experience. Ready to unlock your data’s potential? Get in touch today.
