• Ad Age, Monday, May 12, 2008 9:48 AM

Doling out free product is no longer the province of marketers who can't afford to buy mass media. Giants from McDonald's to Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Dunkin' Donuts are adopting sampling on a grand scale. Traditional supermarket sampling is on the rise as well; Cannondale Associates says it's expected to double in three years.

One reason may be that pinched consumers appreciate freebies while pinched marketers are looking for less-expensive ways to get their messages out. But boosters point to a simple reason for the sampling boom: It works. "Nothing sells like trying a product," says Scott Thurston, president of Street Sampling. It's accountable, too, he adds. "We can look at sales numbers in ZIP codes of the areas that we've sampled and look for spikes in sales at the retail level."

Larry Light, past CMO of McDonald's and founder of consulting firm Arcature, said sampling doesn't have anything to do with the economy. Marketers can discount to give consumers a break or add permanent value items, but discounting hurts brand equity, he said, while sampling builds it up. Arcature's sampling research has found that 80% of respondents prefer a free sample to a coupon.

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