Just after I’d finished the previous post (I often write posts the day before to avoid that whole post-in-haste-and-then-it’s-stuck-on-the-interwebs-forever thing) I popped out to go to the post office and found this outside the front door:
I guessed it was a sample. A smallish 8 servings sized box of All Bran Golden Crunch. The clue was that it was in a clear, rainproof, plastic bag – which the last time I checked isn’t how cereal is sold in Tesco.
But there was no note. No helpful branded leaflet explaining that this was a free sample box of a tasty new product now available from my local supermarket. And I’d been home all day report writing so I know no one had rung the doorbell to deliver a few key brand messages and hand the sample over in person with a smile. It was just sitting there.
I had a quick look in my neighbours driveways and couldn’t see any other boxes, but perhaps they were sampling to a specific house type or ACORN profile (although a bit of googling reveals that the product is one of those ‘sluggish digestion’ solutions so god knows how they’d work out which houses to leave a sample at…). Perhaps our house looked too scary to hang around and ring the bell. Perhaps they simply forgot to leave a note.
Or perhaps somewhere between the brand, the sampling agency and the actual people delivering the samples no-one thought that a random box of cereal appearing on the doorstep might need some kind of context and explanation in order to encourage the recipient to try and hopefully buy it?
Most of my neighbours would not react to finding random foodstuffs on their doorstop with the curiosity I did. They’d probably chuck it in the bin to be on the safe side. Ooops.
“Most of my neighbours would not react to finding random foodstuffs on their doorstop with the curiosity I did. They ‘d probably chuck it in the bin to be on the safe side. Ooops.”
Ooops indeed. And very true. How strange!
I actually tried a bowl for breakfast this morning. It would not be an exaggeration to report that it tastes like bits of cardboard stuck together with wallpaper paste and coated in sugar.
Bet it would have tasted better if it had been presented in a more appealling and appetising way!
It looks like it really *was* was a mistake/error – the mechanic appears to be a branded paper bag posted though the letterbox with instructions to leave outside if you want a box of cereal delivering the next morning. We didn’t get a bag and therefore didn’t leave one outside…but still got a box…
http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=90366&sid=2e97b067b01145224dee4db487b3edcd
Oh – and I think Kellogg’s must now know about the mistake – this post has had quite a few hits from the social media monitoring service they use :)
Who ever designed this promotion needs retraining. What do you expect the milkman to do when he finds their promotional pack under the milk bottle ? -Take it away and to find out if they have missed out on a promotion. Its’s Kellogs who missed out, they should have involved the milk man so their customers would get some free packs of cereal and the milkman wouldn’t be left with a pile of useless empty prompotional bags.