Sampling an effective way to reach out to targeted audience: Dhruv Kalra

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SME Times News Bureau | 06 May, 2013
Sampling is one of the effective ways to reach out to the targeted audience. Over the years we have understood sampling is both a science and an art and has its own set of challenges. Keeping this in mind we have come up with an innovative solution - GOTRY which addresses most of the sampling needs of a brand. It is a technology driven one-stop solution for sampling of brands. We ensure that the relevant products are sampled to the right consumers in a very convenient way making it a win win situation for the consumer as well as the brand, Director, Go Try, Dhruv Kalra told SME Times in an e-mail interview.

GOTRY, India's first tryst with a multi-brand sampling platform. GOTRY gives consumer freedom to try and sample multiple products for no cost.

Excerpts of the interview...

How Go Try came into existence?
Dhruv Kalra: The founding team of GoTry comes from one of India's leading experiential marketing company - Vibgyor Brand Services. Having spent more than a decade closely associated with the BTL & Event industry we have conceptualized and executed various successful on-ground campaigns for leading players in the FMCG, Food & Beverage & Beauty & Cosmetic Sectors. This includes creation of on ground properties, mall activations, market activations, and college & school contact programs to promote the brands to the relevant target group in an innovative manner.

How it works / what is the concept of Go Try?
Dhruv Kalra: Go Try, a multi brand sampling platform from Vibgyor Brand Services, is making an attempt to break away from conventional routes brands follow to sample products to the consumer.

It has set up kiosks at two malls in Delhi NCR and Mumbai, where brands can display products and engage with the audience to provide them free samples.

Calling the method 'precision sampling', Go Try takes basic details of the consumers and then gives them the products that they are eligible to sample.

How is it different from conventional sampling? Benefits / USPs of Go Try?
Dhruv Kalra: GoTry comes with the promise of precision/ targeted sampling that eliminates any riff-raff. Brand managers can identify and delineate their target group and GoTry ensures that samples reach out to them only. This in turn also brings down the cost of sampling.

Other benefits that GoTry offers are:

- It is strategically located in malls that see high footfalls,
- The entire process is technology based hence error free and very efficient
- It provides the brand an opportunity to record the consumer feedback

Technology Used? How do you decide who gets which sample?
Dhruv Kalra: Go Try is an intelligent, technology based sampling platform that takes basic details of the consumers such as gender, age and income bracket through a tablet pc placed at the kiosk, and then gives them the products that they are eligible to sample. The consumer's email ID and phone number are noted and a password generated. Once the password is entered, a computer-generated text message is received on the consumer's phone telling him/her which products he/she is eligible for. Brand managers can set the eligibility criteria for any consumer to sample their products.

Technology also helps clients check their transactions history, update their profile, know what all new products they are eligible for and give feedback online.

What is the benefit for consumers / why will a consumer visit your kiosk again?
Dhruv Kalra: Go Try kiosk is a permeant feature in the mall which always gives the consumers the latest products in the market for free of cost, hence being a major attraction & a must visit location each time they visit their favourite mall.

Consumers simply need to login using their mobile number and give feedback on products tried previously. Once they do so, they get more cool samples to try.

Thanks to our technology support, consumers can checkout their transactions history, update their profile, know what all new products they are eligible for and also share feedback online.

What is the benefit to client?
Dhruv Kalra: With GoTry, our clients have a dedicated platform for targeted sampling of their products across malls. Not only does this bring down marketing costs for them but also gives them control on the sampling process ensuring that samples only get to the right hands. Since GoTry has technology at its core, we can offer our clients the following add-ons:

- They can login any time to check out the exact status of their campaign, stock status, dispense reports etc
- Database & Feedback - Clients can login to figure out all the feedback and database which are available online.

What all sectors / companies would do sampling at Go Try?
Dhruv Kalra: Sampling is preferred tool used by the FMCG & Food & Beverage Sectors. These are the sectors that have always have new offerings in terms of innovative products or variants being launched frequently in a competitive market. Personal Care, Home Care, Beauty & Cosmetics, Processed Foods & Beverages are the main categories, which are relevant to Go Try.

Go Try has been associated with the top brands of these sectors like Ponds, Lifebouy, Comfort, Surf Excel, Pepsodent, Rin, L'Oreal, Dabur, Nivea, Pepsico, Emami, J&J, Reckitt Benckiser, GSK and Kraft Foods among others.

What are the expansion plans for Go Try?
Dhruv Kalra: Now that we have covered Mumbai with Kiosks at Oberoi Mall, Goregaon & Inorbit Mall, Vashi and Delhi with GIP, Noida and MGF Metropolitan, Gurgaon we are in a stage of aggressive expansion. By the end of this year Go Try kiosks would be present at leading malls across the top 6 metro's cities of India.

We are looking to offer services such as discount deals/special offer from outlets present at the mall to be included in our services. We want to become an amalgamator of all samples & deals and would be able to offer them to our consumers in the most efficient way.

Your vision for future.
Dhruv Kalra: With the fragmentation of media and questions being raised for the ROI of ATL we see sampling as the future .Marketers are actively looking for better returns on their marketing investment and sampling does just that. With a targeted, precision sampling mechanism like GoTry we have also eliminated all the apprehensions associated with random sampling to develop a smarter and more evolved method. We definitely see random sampling phasing out slowly, especially with FMCG and F&B based brands. Go Try wants to be the leader of this change and become the pioneer in precision sampling.