Two million consumers targeted in free product sample campaign backed by David Droga
A new company backed by three of Australia’s richest families will offer free product samples each day in return for consumers providing opinions on them via an online platform.
Kerry Stokes’ Australian Capital Equity and the Smorgon and Liberman families, Seek founder Andrew Bassat and creative agency Droga5 – owned by New York-based David Droga – have established the Pinchme company, which will gather the market research without using a middle man.
Droga is a major shareholder, and his agency created the name, design and overall look of the brand out of the New York office and will represent it in the market.
Consumers who sign up to the company’s website will receive a daily email offering them products which will be delivered within seven days.
After sampling the product they then answer six questions on the website about the products, and once data has been collected it is passed onto the brand owner.
Retail giants Proctor and Gamble, Nestle and, Johnson and Johnson, Heinz and others have all joined the platform.
Former New York hedge fund manager Jeremy Reid, who specialised in tech investments such as Google and EBay in their early day, has been appointed executive director of the company.
“We have developed this idea from the ground up and have pioneered this space, and when we took it to our shareholders they loved the idea,” he told Mumbrella.
“Unlike traditional sampling where someones thrusts a product at you in the street, consumers are able choose want they want and therefore have more engagement.”
Such a “Doh!” idea you can’t believe it hasn’t been tried before…
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Neat idea. Beautifully designed website too.
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That’s a lot to do for a 40ml sample of Pantene. Would have liked to read the terms and conditions to find out what they intend to do with accumulated data but as usual it’s not optimised for mobile browsing so you can only read the first several lines.
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I agree with both the above comments. We designed and built the site (so happy to take plaudits for that), but can’t claim any credit for the idea.
But when we were approached by our client to build it, it was one of those moments where I had shivers down my spine at how awesome an idea it was. Obviously heaps of sampling businesses out there, but nothing like this model, to the best of my knowledge.
And if the response of the FMCG companies themselves, and the initial consumer take-up is anything to go by, this could be huge…
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Good idea – but Soup is already doing this – has been for years.
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Tom this has been done before – numerous times in the past few years. Agree it’s a good idea.
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@lucy-loo
I agree that there is some overlap with Soup, but the model has some significant differences too. The full site launches in a few weeks, so it will be more apparent then, I guess.
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There’s another sampling business launching the same time with a similar model, they’ve been in market since end of last year. They seem pretty cool – check it out. sampleit.com.au
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Yes I’ve seen Sample it too. Wonder if they make you jump through the same hoops to get a sample?
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