Is Partnership Sampling the Best Marketing Channel for Healthy Kids’ Brands?
The healthy snack market is always aiming to gain a crucial lead in engaging a younger target audience; specifically children.
Marketing to a younger audience can be a powerful tool in influencing a child’s eating habits, particularly relevant at the moment as the Government continues to encourage healthy eating amidst Covid19. During childhood, food preferences are made and positive healthy food choices can help to encourage healthier eating and avoidance of obesity into adulthood. Meaning marketing healthy food products from a young age is essential.
However, marketing healthy snacks must not only be aimed at the parents and carers who are the primary purchasers, children are more likely to try a product if they have a positive association with it. And this should be beyond the eye-catching cartoons which are often affiliated with more sugary-laden foods. Especially – as research by the US National Library of Medicine and National Institute of Health found – children are predisposed to prefer sugary, high-energy foods from a young age. So children tasting healthier snacks should be actively encouraged!
But there are strict regulations that must be adhered to when marketing to children. It is a heavily regulated area of marketing and companies/brands must adhere to the guidelines when choosing how to best market a product. Any breach of this could see an advertisement pulled and a company sanctioned.
In addition to children needing to try healthier snacks for both short term and longer term health, children may need to experience the product on multiple occasions. A U.S. poll found that children need repeated exposure to healthier foods before they acquire a taste for it… and this can be up to 10 times!
A positive social environment has also been found to increase children’s willingness to try new foods. This includes children experiencing something new when with their peers, and in a space that is safe and positive. Environment therefore becomes very important when sampling healthy products.
Partnership Sampling; delivering trust and changing taste perceptions
So how can a healthy brand successfully market their products to both children and their adults, whilst adhering to all the regulations, allow children to have multiple experiences trying the product, and find a trusted and positive environment for children to experience the product whilst they are having fun with peers? Partnership sampling is the answer!
That’s why we’re so excited about our new partnership with the Scouts!
Through Flavor’s partnership with the Scouts Association, we believe we have curated a powerful opportunity for children to taste healthy products in a fun and safe environment with their peers. As the Scouts offer both weekly and annual events and activities, children have the chance to experience healthy products over multiple occasions. Being a trusted and well-known association, the Scouts has 500,000 children aged 6 upwards that can experience these snacks across 7,500 groups in the UK.
Beyond this, Flavor’s partnership with the Scouts offers brand awareness – as the Scouts use their Heathy Eating Initiative to incorporate educational activities about the health benefits of the product and how this contributes to the importance of healthy eating.
With the healthy snacking movement continuously growing, and new brands emerging, it is important for companies to invest wisely in measuring and devising a campaign to target children effectively. This is a key opportunity for brands to have their healthy brand awareness prompted by the Scouts, a trusted nationwide organisation, reaching half a million children.
This isn’t Flavor’s first time experiencing the success and benefits of partnerships for marketing and promoting healthier brands. We have found that sampling centred around strategic partnerships are extremely effective in engaging both parents and children with samples, as well as building positive brand perception.
To address negative taste perceptions for healthier snacks amongst parents, we have worked with multiple children’s clubs and activities to distribute thousands of samples to targeted audiences in an environment when parents can see their kids enjoying a snack.
Another example of Partnership Sampling working for a healthy brand was when we worked with Biotiful Dairy. We curated partnerships with independent gyms throughout the UK. We delivered over 30,000 samples to 77 gyms over a 10 day period. The campaign returned satisfying results for the brand… with over 5,000 direct sales created and a 17% sales uplift over 6 weeks.
At Flavor, we use Partnership Sampling as part of an integrated sampling approach to curate the perfect mix of sampling techniques to deliver optimal results for every campaign. We look after all sampling elements under one roof to drive efficiencies in targeting, relevance, measurement & ROI…
If you would like to find out more about social sampling or any of our integrated sampling techniques you can get in touch [email protected] & 07977 148784
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5331538/