Sampling Staff – Sweet success for Firefly

Consumer concerns about the hidden sugar content of many soft drinks makes it hard for new companies to break into this very competitive market. People are looking for something different, something with far less sugar and with a healthier appeal.

Firefly believed they had the answer: a range of revitalizing, drinks based on still water, fruit juice and active botanicals. This combination of natural ingredients created refreshing drinks full of flavour and taste. As an unexpected extra, the drinks also contained not sugar but a dash of spirits!

Winning over customers requires a lot of hard work, and marketing skills. Simply saying that the taste is great, is not enough. Consumers need to be convinced. As a result Firefly knew they needed a very proactive marketing approach, which would prove to consumers that everything being said about the new drink was correct.

A sampling campaign was the perfect answer. If people taste it and like it, then they are more likely to buy it in future.

Having decided on their strategy, Firefly turned to us for help.

The Sampling campaign

Envisage staff set up a sampling area within a café at the Surrey Research Park, Guildford. Their task was to provide a selection of activities:
Encourage people to try samples from the 330 ml Firefly drinks range
Deal with sampling requests for drinks in high profile retail outlets like Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and Whole Foods, in addition to other white collar business and industry locations.
Obtaining feedback was essential. Firefly asked them to identify what the public liked and disliked. They also had to obtain comments about the taste, packaging, marketing and flavour.

Sampling Outcomes

The Sampling area proved a massive success, and Firefly were really impressed with the results. They gained a massive amount of valuable feedback from the public as well as retailers. Armed with this information, they were able to confirm their marketing approach, the product range and tweek the product to become even more successful.

A small scale sampling campaign within a carefully chosen target market had delivered big results for Firefly and its future product development. Spurred on by this success, the project has become a springboard for nationwide expansion allowing Firefly to obtain a good share of the soft drinks sector.