A new vending machine from Kraft Foods has been designed to hand out samples of the company’s new Jell-O Temptations dessert to adults only, turning away any kids who try to get one.
If an in-store kiosk can recommend recipes based on the visitor’s gender and age, then why couldn’t similar technology distribute samples selectively to just the right target audience? Well, now a new vending machine, also from Kraft Foods, has been designed to hand out samples of the company’s new Jell-O Temptations dessert only to adults, turning away any kids who try to get one.
Kraft Foods bills its Jell-O Temptations product as “the first Jell-O for adults,” and its advertisinghas reinforced that message. Now, thanks to a partnership with Intel, the company has applied similar discrimination in its sampling strategy. In trial campaigns both in New York and Chicago recently, Kraft has used a vending machine that reportedly can determine the user’s age by scanning his or her face and measuring features including the distance between ears and eyes, for example. When the machine concludes that the visitor is a child, it shuts down and asks the child to step aside. The video below demonstrates the new, age-specific sampling machine in action:
More than USD 1 billion is spent on sampling each year, as Gizmag notes, so anything that can sharpen targeting and reduce waste is sure to be welcomed by brands — not to mention creating additional buzz among consumers. An innovation to try out in your own sampling campaigns?