YOUNG, FREE AND SAMPLE

Never take sweets from strangers” is basic survival advice for children, and no-one would want to suggest otherwise.

Unfortunately, it makes it difficult for companies who are targeting their products at children to use one of the most powerful marketing techniques – product sampling. Marketers and their agencies have to be very careful when, where and how, they do it.

David Carter, managing director of field marketing agency Merchandising Sales Force, says: “Nearly 40 per cent of our supplier-led demonstration activity is conducted on products targeted at young people or children. The most significant difference between offering food or confectionery to adults and to children is that the onus on informing potential samplers about the contents or ingredients passes from the consumer to the manufacturer and/or demonstrator.”

As a result, Carter says demonstrators must obtain permission from parents or responsible adults at the point of sale before handing over samples, and must point out potential effects of particular ingredients.

Everyone must now be aware that certain foodstuffs can be lethal to certain people. The most obvious example is nut allergy, where even the smallest amount of nuts in a product can kill. And there are other medical conditions which need to be taken into account when free samples are being handed out, such as diabetes.

Nor is it just food which field marketers or product demonstrators have to be careful with. There is a risk that bright lights and patterns may trigger epileptic fits, and there is evidence which suggests that computer games may do so too – which means that computer games demonstrators have to be careful.

Of course, parental concern can go beyond medical conditions. Field marketing staff have to be aware that many parents have very strong views on what their children are allowed to eat, and even on what activities they are allowed to take part in.

One of the biggest recent sampling campaigns came as part of the Walkers “Dial a Prize” promotion, created by sales promotion agency The Marketing Store.

The sampling side was handled by FDS Field Marketing.

Over the three months from August to October last year, FDS handled about 60,000 telephone calls from consumers redeeming an in-pack prize from Walkers Crisps or Quavers. There were five categories of prize winner – 5, 50, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 – and every prize was delivered to the consumer’s home, workplace or school within 48 hours.

The deliveries were designed to attract as much attention as possible. They were done in branded cars playing Walkers advertising theme music over loadspeakers, and the crowds which gathered were given free packets of crisps.

While this campaign was not specifically targeted at children, they make up a substantial part, if not the majority, of the crisp-eating market. Neil Aplin, account director at FDS, observes: “The client may not have actually said target eight to 12 year-olds, but we are well used to conducting sampling activity that attracts the interest of children – they tend to accumulate wherever something is to be had free.”

When the delivery was to be made to a school, the company always obtained permission from the headteacher before turning up with sampling stock, badges and balloons. Some schools did turn down ,visits because they felt children might become over-excited.

Aplin says: “When we sample fmcg products, we brief sampling personnel not to approach under 16s, but to hand out samples to parents, or with teachers’ advice and consent.”

Fox Confectionery, part of Nestlé, makes a range of children’s confectionery including the Willy Wonka products and is running a promotion involving sampling at Alton Towers and Chessington World of Adventures.

Fox Confectionery marketing manager Paul Diver explains that Nestlé con-ducts considerable research to find out how children discover their products – and the main method it uses is word of mouth. “They hear about it in the playground,” he says. As a result, getting products into the hands of young consumers is very important, because it helps to create the word of mouth which can drive confectionery sales.

Not so important, of course, that it overrides questions of morality, particularly for a company like Nestlé, which is hyper-sensitive about its caring, family-values image. Diver says: “Because we’re Nestlé, we’re very careful about not putting kids in danger.”

The sampling campaign is carefully run. “Everything is supervised. Alton Towers has its own people, and they know exactly what to do. Samples are handed out at the exit as people leave, and only if the field marketer has checked with a parent or guardian first.”

Nestlé is also distributing free samples cover mounted on The Beano and The Dandy comics.

Field marketing agency BFP is running a sampling campaign for Dr Pepper, until mid-July. The aim is to give out 1 million samples to ten to 14 year-olds, with “hit squads” in Dr Pepper branded vehicles distributing free samples in branded cups to children in all the major cities in the UK.

The sampling activity will be tied in with local radio roadshows, where children who bring in empty Dr Pepper cans will be given an opportunity to play a Dr Pepper branded computer game.

Lindsay Hunter, account manager for Dr Pepper at BFP, says that in every city the police, local council and educational authorities have been advised of the forthcoming promotion. Before any sampling activity is conducted outside schools, the principal’s permission will be obtained. Hunter adds: “We will only execute campaigns which we feel have been researched thoroughly. Our aim is to promote brands and enhance their image in the market place, and all our campaigns are 100 per cent bona fide.”

Gary MacManus, business development director of Aspen Field Marketing, makes a distinction between those promotions which are attractive to children but aimed at parents, and those aimed at the children themselves.

He says: “We work on the ‘pester power’ of kids across many of our accounts. For example, for Vodafone we have created the Vodafone bears, field marketing staff in bear costumes. They are meant to get kids to come into the stores – but it’s the parents who are with them that we are going to be selling to.” In other words, pester power can build store traffic. Aspen has done similar work for Columbia Tri-Star on the video releases of family movies such as André and Little Women.

But when Aspen is handling products aimed specifically at children, MacManus says pester power is not invoked. “If it’s sweets, for example, then you have to be careful. You can’t actually approach kids direct. We would use sampling, but not in a way designed to create ‘pester power’.”

Some may find these protestations of moral rectitude difficult to believe: marketers do, of course, target children. After all, they now have command over substantial amounts of disposable income, be it their own or their parents.

But the point is that respectable marketers and the agencies that advise them are well aware that there are lines which they cannot cross. The furore created when companies do cross those lines – or even when they only appear to – starkly illustrates that there are sound commercial reasons why the field marketing industry has to be so careful about how it handles children’s products. v