Robbie Thain
Founder, CEO
AI-generated illustrative image. Not an official campaign image.
Social Soup’s Australian survey puts recommendation beside retail visibility. Here’s what it means for CPG staffing, product trial and field reporting.
On November 5, 2026, Social Soup founder and CEO Sharyn Smith presented grocery trial research at a briefing alongside brand strategist Matt Jones, according to Mediaweek. The outlet describes the research as a nationally representative survey of 850 Australians aged 18 and older.
For U.S. CPG and beverage marketers, the practical question is where these findings belong in the field plan. The reported relationship between recommendation and trial deserves attention. So does the store environment where shoppers encounter the product and decide whether to buy.
According to Mediaweek, 27% of main grocery buyers who had recently tried a new product named another person as their biggest influence. Paid advertising accounted for 4% across the channels covered by the survey. Those reported shares sit behind Mediaweek’s “more than six times” comparison.
Mi3 provides a useful breakdown of Social Soup’s findings:
The operational reading is straightforward: recommendation and retail presence belong in the same plan. Treating the finding as a contest between word of mouth and advertising leaves the largest reported influence outside the discussion.
The sharing figures also matter for experiential teams. Mediaweek reports that Social Soup found 78% of people who tried something new told others. Among people who shared a new-product experience, 68% did so in person while 6% posted on social media.
These are self-reported Australian grocery findings, not a controlled comparison of physical sampling against advertising or a forecast for U.S. shoppers. The coverage does not provide fieldwork dates, question wording, weighting details or uncertainty estimates. For U.S. marketers, the appropriate use is a hypothesis to test locally rather than a causal sales benchmark.
What changed at the briefing was the evidence available for planning. It gives field teams a reason to examine how introductions become conversations and how those conversations connect with a product people can find.
At Makai, our view is simple: welcome people well and make the next step useful. A generous product experience should feel human. The operating plan should still connect that experience with a business objective.
We specialize in retail demonstrations, product sampling programs and roadshows that bring brands face to face with their audiences. These programs are designed to drive trial and build consumer relationships while supporting retail velocity across multiple locations. That places the conversation around the product at the center of the work.
The Social Soup findings make that conversation worth examining more closely. If recommendation is part of the intended outcome, an activation brief should address what someone can understand and pass along after the interaction. Product distribution alone does not answer that planning question.
A useful conversation gives a shopper room to evaluate the product and understand where it fits. Retail availability gives that interest somewhere to go. That is the practical connection behind matching demonstrations to the buying setting.
We also design mobile activations and roadshows around 90-day product launch windows to accelerate consumer trial and support retail performance. For a launch program, our view is that trial and retail findability should be considered together. Neither should be treated as an afterthought to the experience.
This matters for pipeline because the campaign objective extends beyond a pleasant interaction. Makai’s positioning is built around carefully executed face-to-face experiences designed to generate measurable sales pipeline. A recommendation opportunity belongs alongside that objective, not in place of evidence about purchases or qualified leads.
The aloha is in the welcome. The discipline is in keeping the product experience connected to an observable next step.
The downstream response is a set of choices about ambassador attention, purchase access and reporting. Those choices belong in the brief before the team reaches the floor.
For retail demonstrations, the staffing discussion should cover more than how product reaches shoppers. It should also cover the real conversations that the activation is intended to support.
Makai’s retail demonstrations use trained brand ambassadors to connect product trials with in-store sales through those conversations. The relevant planning question is whether the assignment gives that work a clear purpose. A brief centered only on distribution leaves the relationship between trial and purchase poorly defined.
The research supports attention to both interpersonal influence and retail encounters. In practice, that points toward an engagement brief covering the product experience and where the shopper can buy. It also gives marketing leaders a basis for reviewing whether the staffing plan serves the intended interaction rather than only a distribution target.
This is a choice about what the team is there to accomplish. The sample is part of the experience. The shopper’s ability to understand and act on it is part of the objective.
Mi3’s finding that in-store discovery was the largest reported influence gives retail findability a clear place in the discussion. For an in-store demonstration, the experience and the product’s location should be considered together. For a mobile activation, the purchase path belongs in the plan alongside the trial itself.
Trade show execution requires the same clarity about the intended next step. Makai plans and manages spaces designed to attract attention and start conversations that can become customer relationships. That makes planning the footprint around product interaction a business decision rather than only a visual one.
Our view is that the layout should support the interaction the brand wants to have. Product trial and a qualified conversation deserve consideration together. A footprint designed around distribution alone answers a narrower question than a space designed to support participation and follow-up.
Permitting remains a separate execution responsibility within Makai’s integrated services. The survey findings belong in the engagement brief rather than serving as a permit specification. The operational task is to connect the consumer-facing experience with the logistics that make it possible.
Mediaweek reports that 51% of surveyed trialing grocery buyers bought the new product on the spot. It also reports that 83% bought within a week of first seeing it. Those findings make purchase timing a useful subject for local measurement.
A practical reporting discussion can separate the outcomes the research describes from the outcomes Makai’s positioning targets:
These categories should remain distinct. A conversation is not automatically a purchase. A distributed sample is not automatically a recommendation. A qualified lead serves a different reporting purpose from a consumer trial.
The same distinction matters when connecting physical trial with later digital activity. The objective is a readable account of what happened across the experience, not a larger total created by adding unlike measures together.
Return on Investment should be evaluated against the outcome the activation was funded to support. Sample counts belong in operational reporting. Purchases and qualified leads belong in their own categories so the marketing team can assess the program against its stated purpose.
The useful response to the Social Soup findings is a more connected brief. Product trial deserves a clear role. So do the conversation around it and the retail destination that gives interest somewhere to go.
For a CMO or VP of Marketing, that means bringing the engagement objective into the same review as staffing and footprint flow. The reporting plan should then identify which outcomes the team intends to observe. That creates a practical basis for testing the Australian findings in the brand’s own market.
At your next launch review, will the Social Soup briefing translate into a field plan that connects a useful conversation with a product shoppers can find?
The gap between a product introduction and a purchase opportunity makes retail conversations a practical concern for CPG marketers planning regional or national campaigns. Makai delivers retail demonstrations through trained brand ambassadors who use real conversations and product trials to support in-store sales.
30 Years Experiential & Retail Activation Partner for CPG & Beverage Brands | Multi-Market Demos, Roadshows & Costco/Club Programs That Actually Sell
