Consumers try so you know what they'll buy

At Sample U, Consumers try so you know what they’ll buy.

I have spent the last 20 years shaping the brands of Fortune 500 and start-up companies. The more successful companies share many things in common. One thing in particular is the subject of this article: Research. The more successful designers, advertisers and marketers know you have to go to your customers for feedback on usability, price and suggestions for improvement. Today, this practice is proving even more essential as consumers have become guarded of their hard earned dollars.

Tryvertising is the future of advertising. It combines market research and advertising by putting products and creative ideas in the hands of the people who will be buying them. Sample U, a research laboratory on the campus of Alliant International University in San Diego has put Tryvertising into the spotlight. The company places products from well known and soon to be well known companies in a retail test environment and asks you, the consumer (whom they now call their Trysumers) to give your opinions about the products you test. Trysumers move through this mock retail store, answering survey questions about the products and leave with a bag full of free gifts for their work! Its a win-win for everyone. The companies get valuable information about their products directly from Trysumers, and the Trysumers get free stuff!

The advertising aspect comes into play since Trysumers develop a natural affinity for the companies of the products they test which results in sales after the Sample U experience. Consider that the Sample U TryStore can move 10,000-30,000 Trysumers through it’s doors every month and you can see the value of this kind of experiential marketing and advertising.

Advertising and marketing agencies have gotten into the game as well by placing their creative concepts in TryStores to get evaluations from Trysumers before they present to their clients. This way, they can validate their concepts before spending their client’s dollars which increases the campaign’s success. We at Deal Design Group have been using Sample U and Tryvertising in all our creative development since October of 2009. It has totally changed our world! Instead of participating in the battle of egos that breaks out when you try to justify creative concepts to a room full of type-A personalities, we simply show them how the concepts tested with consumers, and the discussion is over. I tell them “we went to customers, we asked them what we should do. they told us, so let’s do that.” I know, its a revolutionary idea: Validating your ideas before you spend dollars. And its amazing how many companies don’t simply because old fashioned market research is too costly and takes to long. Now, Tryvertising through Sample U gives us feedback in as little as 48 hours, is crazy cheap,  and makes us smarter designers and marketers. I don’t know about you, but I can always use a little more “smart” on my side.

Check out www.sampleu.com.