Dentsu Creative Activate has been partnering with Lindt Chocolate for the last 16 years to bring their instore sampling campaigns to life. With over 1200 sampling shifts run each year nationwide aligned to NPDs and seasonal periods, Lindt has a strong focus on their Christmas campaign.
THE CHALLENGE
With supermarkets typically packed to the brim with shoppers in the lead up to Christmas, Lindt want to build ownership in the confectionary category through trial, ultimately growing market share in underperforming stores and increasing overall sales year on year.
THE SOLUTION
Dentsu planned and coordinated a nationwide instore sampling campaign alongside Lindt, targeting both low sales stores and high-priority stores. We implemented an ‘attack and defend’ strategy to drive sales across the country, supporting underperforming stores with awareness, trial and sales conversion – simultaneously increasing sales penetration in top performing stores (defending market share).
With ‘attack’ stores identified as underperforming in terms of sales or market share, our approach saw two bursts of activity delivered – prompting awareness in November by sampling NPD flavours, then again in December to celebrate gifting and large format packs aligned in Christmas promotions and displays.
Stores that were already top performing formed part of the ‘defend’ group, which were supported during the key Christmas selling period with increased stock weights and targeted instore sampling activity. This allows Lindt to defend their market position as the number one premium chocolate brand in those stores.
The sampling activity was delivered across the entire country delivered by an experienced team of Brand Ambassadors with both static table sampling & roaming near displays where appropriate.
OUTCOME
Results based on an average of the 2023 & 2024 Lindt Christmas sampling campaigns which implemented the attack and defend strategy.
- With more than 23,000 sales recorded throughout the campaign, this resulted in a 63% ROI delivered for Lindt across the campaign period.
- 480 instore sampling shifts delivered nationwide, from Kerikeri through to Invercargill. More than 50 experienced Lindt Brand Ambassadors delivered this activity across the country.
- An incredible 22% conversion rate recorded from sample to sale on average per shift (typical confectionary conversion goal around 14-16%).
- 142,706 engagements in-store, with 118,700 samples of Lindt Lindor (83% of people we spoke to went on to sample the product).
