You have probably seen that Frozen Oak is now available for a limited time at a couple of petrol stations in NSW via social media. What a great way to gauge the public reaction to the concept of a new product range! With limited availability across NSW, Oak is asking purchasers of their Frozen Oak to share their experience on social media using a series of custom hashtags – creating demand in other states for the product, getting suggestions for new flavours and essentially killing it at making a user-generated content-lead campaign. The advantage of doing a soft product test launch like this, using social media as your primary testing and measurement mechanism, is that you get your feedback almost immediately from the comments, likes, reactions, shares and also by gauging how fast your Frozen Oak machines drain out!   If your brand is established, you have the ability to ask consumers directly whether or not your new product has a valid reason for launching onto the market. Failing to ask or listen to consumers regarding how they feel about your new product idea will ensure failure within the FMCG sphere (see: Coke Life). If your brand is new to the market, your established brand is planning to release a completely different product or you’re planning to release an innovative new product that nobody has heard of then obviously your mileage may vary. Finally, if your product truly is a failure in the eyes of consumers, you can gracefully fade away into the dark abyss of social media update notifications and hopefully learn something about what your consumers really want. (Hint: Try again later!) This campaign has been really beneficial to the Oak brand as it brings Oak to the forefront of the consumer’s mind within the category, pushing out competitors such as Dare, Big M and Dairy Farmer’s Classic. In a competitive and well-established market like this, it creates a point of difference that gets people talking about the product, reinvigorating sales. The fact that we have been having an absolute scorcher in Sydney and the product is targeted at that “summer feeling” doesn’t hurt at all – good timing and great ideas make for great campaigns! Now all Oak has to do now is roll out the Frozen Oak machines to service stations across the state or even nationally that are happy to further promote the Oak brand…

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