As Groupon deals go, it wasn't very large. Nonetheless, a limited test by General Mills of the daily deal site is seen as a significant first step by a CPG manufacturer into the daily deal arena.
General Mills offered a $40 sampler kit and coupon book for $20 to consumers in Minneapolis/St. Paul and San Francisco. The offer, which included delivery to consumers' homes, was made available to 4,500 in its home market and 500 in California.
"We're always looking for efficient ways to sample our products and given Groupon's scale, we thought this would be a way to reach a sizeable audience," Karl Schmidt, director of promotion marketing at General Mills, told Advertising Age. "Our next steps are to evaluate the results -- I think the early read is positive -- and then factor the results into our next fiscal year, which begins in June."
Mr. Schmidt told the Star Tribune that General Mills did not look at Groupon as "an e-commerce platform." The company was looking to put samples in the hands of consumers with the intent of driving them to retail stores.
"There's an argument to be made that Groupon consumers are consumers like all other consumers and, therefore, they are great people to sample," David Diamond, a CPG industry consultant, told Ad Age. "There's another argument to be made that Groupon users are some slice of society that spends a tremendous amount of their time looking for deals and will do anything to get a deal."
General Mills, Mr. Diamond said, could be recruiting consumers interested in their products, "but only when they are on sale really cheap."