Missed Marketing Opportunity for Quaker Mini Delights

Someone’s always giving out some sort of free sample or another in downtown Boston: gum, sports drinks, candy, snacks. Most days, I’m not far from Quincy Market, a main tourist attraction, and - especially in good weather - there are often freebies to be had. The other day, I was offered a free package of something called Quaker Mini Delights: Chocolately Drizzle. Well, I am never going to turn down something that has the word “chocolate” in it, so I took it.

I might not run right out and buy some for real, but as a 90 calorie snack goes, this wasn’t bad: some sort of whole-grain (hence “healthy”) little mini-crackery-cake with, well, chocolately drizzle on it.

In small print on the back of the package, there was a number to call with questions or comments.

Not much of a call to action!

I’m sure for the young marketer who was giving out the samples, the goal was to give as many away, as quickly as possible. Mission, I’m sure, accomplished. But what was Quaker looking for? Presumably some sort of feedback and/or encouraging a purchase. If either or both of those were the case, this was a missed opportunity for Quaker.

Why not have a website that I could go to to fill in some questions on the product. I’m not likely to go there without an incentive, so how about a coupon for dollars off other Quaker products, like cereals, which I do buy. Or, if the Mini Delights are available now, or are going to be available soon, why not offer me some coupons for them - either after I fill in some info on line, or via a peel-off coupon that’s on the sample package I was given.

What Quaker’s accomplished is building my awareness of a product I’ve never heard of -a good thing - and encouraged me to try it - another good thing.

But they’ve really missed an opportunity to try to make me a customer, haven’t they? Plus they missed the opportunity to provide this feedback: sure, it was hot - in the upper 80’s - when I was handed the sample, but - I gotta tell you - the Chocolately Drizzle got all over my fingers.

Anyway, this is a good example of a promotion that could have done more to actually promote the product, isn’t it?

(Of course, they did get me to blog about it, so maybe social media exposure was part of their game plan…)

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