Go Try: Sampling gets a new face

Feedback plays a crucial role for brands when it comes to launching new products, so what better way to gauge shopper response than through shoppers. Go Try is India's first multi-brand precision sampling platform where they hand out product samples to shoppers based on their personal information and demographics. As shoppers/users share feedback on samples they'd taken home the first time around, other set of free samples is given to them. Dhruv Kalra, Director, Go Try says that the concept of Go Try came from the recurring need for brands to conduct sampling for their new product launches. He further adds in similar lines, "The sampling methods being used were very ad hoc and led to huge wastage and inefficiencies. Any on-ground sampling plans customized for the clients worked out to be very expensive and many a times did not prove financially viable. Hence we started working on the project and eventually launched Go Try Marketing in September 2012.”

Go Try has worked with FMCG and F&B firms in the country and have provided services to multiple brands like Unilever, L'Oreal, J&J, Cadbury's, Dabur, Pepsico, GSK, Reckitt Benkiser & Capital Foods among several others. However, the GoTry Marketing team has come across many challenges as this was a new idea and a critical challenge was to explain the multi-brand platform to the brands and convince them to come on board. Adds Dhruv Kalra, "Till now brands had always conducted standalone activities and was a task to convince them for a multi brand sampling model. We overcame this problem by ensuring that no two competing brands would ever be sampled together at our kiosks. Also brands wanted to have maximum visibility & branding space for which we incorporated an LCD TV to showcase the brand communication.”

GoTry is an automated model and comes to the shoppers when they are in the right frame of mind - it is when they are shopping. As the shopper gets to sample new products, GoTry provides them with value for their feedback while rewarding them with more products. According to Dhruv Kalra, "All this brings in a sense'the joy back to sampling' making them look forward to it. We believe that it is this consumer experience which has given GoTry its large numbers.”

Currently there are four GoTry kiosks in malls across Delhi and Mumbai. These include: Inorbit Mall (Vashi), Growell Mall (Kandivili), Great India Place (Noida) and MGF Metropolitan Mall (Gurgaon). Go Try shares their advantages for shoppers and brands as below:

For brands

• Precision Sampling - This ensures that products only reach out to the target group
• Visibility at High footfall Malls - Brands are seen at prominent locations
• Cost Savings -  Huge savings as compared to owning space at malls
• Branding - Brands get branding opportunities at our kiosks in the form of product displays, AV Played on LCD, POS display
• Reach: With GoTry's huge database of registered users it promises reach to large number of correct TG
• Feedback - Feedback is in-built into the process and mechanism to ensure that brands have a way of communicating with samplers
• Technology based model - Extremely reliable technology based model that reduces margin of human error. Yet, the model is customizable enough to let brand managers tweak the criterion for handing out their products and feedback questions
• Communication with customers - Since  details of each user is available, brands have the opportunity to regularly communicate with their TG
• Track updates - Brand managers can keep track of their products, users, stock etc easily by logging in

For shoppers

• Samples they can use - Instead of being bombarded with random samples, users are handed out only those samples they need
• Easy to use interface - The Ipad interface at kiosk is extremely responsive and user friendly
• More samples on registering feedback - Consumers get more free samples each time they record feedback on those they had picked up the last time
• Web based model  - Users can record their feedback sitting at home

On final note Dhruv Kalra adds that the modal has received an average of 8000 new registration per month. On their expansion strategy he adds, "Over the next quarter we would be looking to expand our reach across Delhi & Mumbai with 5 Metro's by end of 2013 and spread over to 10 towns in India by 2014.”