Samsung Pop Up Experience Tour

The brief was far from simple. Take the new Samsung Flip and Fold smartphones on the road for 8 weeks. Stay no longer than 4 days in any one location. Achieve 53,000 customer interactions. And return with insight into which venues and geographical locations would gain the best returns from future promotional campaigns.

The results were impressive. 168,640 interactions. 55 locations visited. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 85.57% and an average cost per interaction 57% lower than budgeted.

How did Blue Square achieve this?

Blue Square had been staffing experiential static pop-up stands for Samsung for some years. While the activations have proved successful in promoting Samsung devices and technology to hundreds of visitors, the approach was changed this time to visit more locations with the aim of maximising interactions.

What’s more, as the previous activations remained in the same location, neither Blue Square nor Samsung could test and learn what type of venues and geographical locations were most successful. For example, did the stands perform better in shopping centres or retail parks? Were there more interactions in say Woking or Stoke?

Samsung therefore challenged Blue Square to deliver a programme that would address the issues of the static pop-ups and achieve the following:

• Raise awareness of the foldable category
• Activate three mobile pop-up experience units
• Engage with the public via a UK tour
• Focus on locations identified by Facebook Analytics and Blue Square Insights
• Drive potential customers to purchase

In the past Blue Square has focused on delivering excellent Brand Ambassadors for Samsung experiences, this time saw us owning and delivering the end-to-end solution of this best-in-class activation.

This included sourcing the units, planning the locations, recruiting and training dedicated and committed colleagues, and managing the entire eight-week campaign so that Samsung only had to deal with one project management agency.

Blue Square engaged multiple suppliers from double-decker bus activation agencies to pop-up mobile unit manufacturers to design a roaming mini shop.

The shop would allow customers to come and see most of the Samsung portfolio and receive a brilliant demonstration from one of Blue Square’s eight promoters on each of the three units.

The units needed to be large enough to provide a comfortable product demo experience for visitors but small enough to travel from one location to another on the back of an HGV truck. They also needed to be dropped to the ground and expanded out at each location.

Designed with these criteria in mind, the three 7 by 4 metre units matched the new product launch colour palettes and global design being used on static Samsung pop-ups within the UK.

Samsung’s brief had been clear on wanting the team to achieve upwards of 53,000 interactions – and use these interactions to see which locations would be most suitable for future promotions.

The team therefore recorded how many interactions took place at each site using an end-of-day survey and Samsung’s RMS (Retail Mode Interactions)

This allowed them to track how many members of the public had touched demo devices within a certain time frame and whether unit 1, 2 or 3 had been the most successful.

It also enabled them to see in which geographic locations Flip or Fold devices were more attractive.

• Blue Square outperformed the 53,000 interactions target by 318% and achieved 168,640 interactions
• Comparing sales figures during weeks 34 to 40 of 2021, the campaign achieved a sales uplift of 2.2 over the same period in 2022
• The mobile units exceeded the NPS target of 70% and achieved 85.57%
• 73.8% of customers surveyed said they were more likely to purchase a Samsung device

As well as exceeding Samsung’s expectations for this campaign, Blue Square has also provided Samsung with highly useful data for future campaigns. Its findings will enable Samsung and its partners to choose the times, venues and locations that will lead to the highest numbers of interactions and potential sales.