Undercover sampling

Joss Davidge, managing partner of brand experience agency BEcause, continues his weekly quest for great marketing ideas.

This week he looks at how the great and the good raved about Lidl produce without even knowing it.
 
When trying to find footing in a highly competitive market it is vital to find what it is that makes you different and then play on that. But what if that difference has become synonymous with ‘low quality’? This is the issue that Lidl has faced over the last couple of years as the German budget supermarket chain has tried to place itself as a cheap alternative to the big name brands, without suggesting that it compromises on the quality of its produce.
 
In a bid to get people to experience its produce, Lidl turned to experiential in this well-orchestrated stunt. Swedish diners were invited to try a new exclusive pop up restaurant called Dill, where they were treated to a nine course meal prepared by a two starred Michelin chef. The place was an instant hit, it was decorated to a high standard, featured low key live music and attracted Stockholm’s great and good. As you can probably guess, the restaurant turned out to be a well-executed stunt from Lidl, where all the produce used to create the high quality dishes was sourced from the budget supermarket.

Lidl Dill 60s from Colony on Vimeo.

Another example of this effective experiential sampling/trickery came from Achla Hummus in Israel who created a pop up restaurant to sample its product, which was widely considered inferior to restaurant made hummus. So the brand put the hummus in a restaurant environment and people found it delicious and in fact stated that they would pay over the odds for it. The restaurant was then revealed as a sampling stunt, leading to a great buzz that generated a staggering 71% lift in sales.



Read more from Joss Davidge.