How Brands Can Grab Gen Z's Attention In An Oversaturated Market

Whatever sector your brand lives in, we guarantee it’s an oversaturated market. From international conglomerates to small startups, it’s harder than ever to grab the attention of Gen Z spenders. Add to this the rising cost-of-living and young people’s eagerness to source the cheapest deals and best value, it’s increasingly important to build and nurture relationships with young people in order to secure their spending. 

Today, we hear from Dig In, a nationwide sampling company and partners of our upcoming Youth Marketing Strategy event in London. In this blog post, their Head of Content Jessica Lever takes a deep dive into a recent collaboration with Pot Noodle and discusses how brand loyalty begins at university.

Finding genuine marketing solutions that make Gen Z pay attention is difficult. We're not saying those guys have short attention spans, but in an oversaturated market, with brands shouting at them from every direction, it's easy to get lost. You can call us old-fashioned, but we think (in fact, we know) that presenting student consumers with something physical can make a massive impact on brand recognition and sales and help your brand breakthrough. 

Dig In x Pot Noodle

Dig In is a nationwide sampling company that has exclusive contracted access to over 140 universities in the UK and a reach of over 500,000 new students every academic year, on top of the students who are still in university and are no longer freshers. With an audience like this, it’s no surprise that some of the biggest brands in the world choose to work with us here, and last year during Freshers, it was Pot Noodle who wanted a piece of the action.

In 2022, 562,000 students were accepted into their respective universities (as per UCAS), and of those, 520,000 received the flagship Dig In box. These boxes are full of freebies and samples from huge brands, and 300,000 of them had a Pot Noodle inside!

So how did the sampling go? 

Pot Noodle reached 99,000 students who either had never tried the product before or who hadn’t tried it in many years. Furthermore, 85.7% of students who received a Pot Noodle went on to say that they now feel more positively about the brand in general.

We asked students ‘How often to you eat instant meals like Pot Noodle?’ The answers were as follows:

• Daily: 4.4% 
• Weekly: 38.5% 
• Once-a-month: 35.2% 
• Virtually never: 22%

The biggest benefit, however, was the answer to our question: ‘As a result of receiving a Pot Noodle sample, are you more likely to purchase it in the future?’ 79.7% say that they were. That’s 238,500 students who are now more likely to purchase a Pot Noodle thanks to the sampling partnership they carried out with Dig In. Some quick maths will tell you that, based on making £1 for every product, that’s at the very least £238k of new sales!

Now, obviously, we’re not saying that Pot Noodle has us to thank for all of its success, but a continued partnership with Dig In does more or less promise amazing numbers. As we know from Voxburner themselves, brand loyalty is something that’s pretty important to students: 42% of students said they would stay loyal to a brand for life if they had a good experience with them early on, while a further 30% said that a positive feeling towards a brand is likely to last at least a few years. Dig In has to power to swing those brand allegiances, and once they do, the profits speak for themselves.

Looking to the future with Pot Noodle

With all of these students now switching to Pot Noodle after their positive sampling experience with Dig In, the scale of opportunity is huge: 

• Daily consumers (22,880 students): £8,351,200 per-year
• Weekly consumers (200,200 students): £10,410,400 per-year
• Monthly consumers (183,040 students): £2,194,480 per-year

Not to be sniffed at.

We’re no stranger to case studies like this; whether it’s 750,000 cans of Pepsi Max being distributed to university students through Dig In, or over 4 million GiffGaff SIM cards being handed out, we’ve got youth marketing sorted out. Drop the team a message to find out more.

Keen to hear more? Catch Dig In at Voxburner’s 2023 Youth Marketing Strategy conference in London and say hello to the team. Don’t miss out and secure your seat now!