Page 194 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

93 USE OPINION LEADERS

Launching new products is always a problem—people don’t
have much to base a judgment on when deciding about adopting
a new product, and often new products just sink without trace.
Marketing theory says that opinions are formed either from direct
experience or from seeing what the leaders do—but figuring out
who the opinion leaders are, and getting to them, can be difficult.
For example, drinks manufacturers often give free samples to bar
staff in nightclubs because the customers assume that the bar staff
will know what’s good to drink: encouraging the bar staff to drink
a particular brand is likely to lead to positive word of mouth to the
customers.

In some cases, though, firms can go a lot further, by using high-
profile opinion leaders.

The idea

When Häagen-Dazs ice cream was first launched in Britain, the idea
of an upmarket ice cream had not yet been explored by the general
public. The ice cream was promoted as a luxury, sensuous brand but
it still needed something else to spark people’s imaginations.

Häagen-Dazs gave away free samples of the product at society events
such as Henley Regatta, Wimbledon, polo tournaments at Cowdray
Park, and so forth, with the result that millions of TV viewers saw the
aristocracy eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Although people do not
necessarily copy aristocrats blindly, the impression of an upmarket,
luxurious brand was conveyed extremely effectively, enabling the
company to establish itself in a new niche in the market.

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