Getting ahead of the curve in-store w/ Jessica Kogan, HSP Brands

In an increasingly digital world, there is still little substitute for wine in people’s mouths. Doing in-store tastings is one way to get directly in front of consumers and get immediate feedback on products. Jessica Kogan, CEO of HSP Brands, is focused on providing both an engaging consumer experience and capturing the data from in-store tastings to drive real insight and ROI for bev alc suppliers.

Detailed Show Notes:

Jessica’s background: co-founder of Cameron Hughes Wine, sold to Vintage Wine Estates and became CMO (took DTC business from $25M to $150M in 3 years), bought back HSP Brands from Vintage

HSP Brands Overview

• Conducts brand activations for adult beverages
• Off-premise primarily (e.g. - national grocery chains)
• Works w/ suppliers to sponsor tastings (1 supplier at a time)
• Digitally promotes events, executes in-store tastings, and has data analytics platform to capture data and show trends
• Usually sample 1 bottle, but can showcase portfolio of wine
• Focused on CA, AZ, NV, TX
• >$100M of product sold, talked to >1M consumers in the last year

HSP customers

• Did FitVine’s brand activations
• Works with 50-100 suppliers
• Best suited brands are 1 - want to do persistent and consistent tastings with a connection to consumer marketing team; 2 - innovation brands, test for early results (requires being on-shelf and a website)

Brand Activators

• Part-time employees
• Want to or already work in bev-alc (e.g. - bartenders, hospitality, community connectors)
• New trend: influx of college kids, recent grads; see the opportunity as a great way to learn how to present, interact, talk to people
• Boomers do a good job of selling wine
• Millennials / Gen Z tend to approach customers with more occasion messaging vs promoting a specific wine
• Pairs team members with the right brands, including feedback from the stores and from the data
• 3 step training process (1 - in-person interviews; 2 - meet w/ current brand activators and go through an event; 3 - 9 part digital training module)

ROI / benefits

• Believes tastings would outperform discounting for the same cost
• Can identify trends in advance, often 8-12 weeks before Nielsen data
• Cost of customer acquisition (“CAC”) <$1/CAC, including credit for bottle sales over a 24 hour period, samples given, and conversations had
• Other in-store tasting providers don’t report results, have zero visibility

Pricing model

• Min 3 hours / $225 ($75/hr)
• Sweet spot is 4 hour events
• Goal should be 50-100 events in 2 markets

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